The Oasis
by IThinkInPoetry
Summary: Terra's got too many choices to make at once, she can't decide how to use her second chance, and, to top it all off, her memories are gone for real now. But, no matter how dangerous her hike through this metaphorical desert is, she's determined to find her oasis.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hi world! *waves* Welcome to my take on the whole "Terra comes back" thing… "take" being a relative term meaning "wishful thinking", but that's what most FanFics are. And no, I did not make a mistake with the character categories. This is indeed an Aqualad/Terra Fic. Aqualad/Terra, Aquarra, AquaTerra, whatever floats your boat. But, while I love Aquarra to death, I hate stories where BB's poor little heart gets broken, especially for no reason. So, I have done my best to avoid that. Hope you like reading this as much as I loved thinking it up!**

**P.S. Sarasim will be in this story a little. The tale of how she got to this time period and why she is staying will be disclosed at a later date, possibly in my next Fic. This is set about three weeks after the defeat of the Brotherhood of Evil.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot and my faithful sidekick: Rose the laptop. **

**You have had doubts in the past, made mistakes, **_Hilarious? Me? Really? _Well if it isn't my favorite little rock 'n roller! **We fight as one!** _**Do you know him?**_ _Terra, stop! We're your friends!_ _**Trust is something you have to earn! **_**I can help you. **_Yes! I promise Terra, no matter what. _Wheredidyoucomefrom,howdidyougethere,whatisyourfavoritecolor,doyouwishtobemyfriend? **I was Slade's apprentice once, I got out. So can you.** _**I trusted you! We trusted you! We gave you everything and you treated us like dirt! **__Earthquakes, mudslides, avalanches._ _**It's your life Terra, your choice.**_ _This will let me know if your in trouble… and keep me from causing you any in return._

"_Uhg, why won't everyone just shut up?"_

"_Terra?"_

"_I said shut up."_

"TERRA!"

"WHAT?"

Terra's blue eyes shot open angrily, only to come face to face with another set of blue eyes, these ones framed by a curtain of bubblegum pink hair.

The eyes blinked at her.

"You looked like you were having a nightmare, so I woke you up."

She blinked back, only now noticing the throbbing pain in her forehead.

"Oh, thanks Kole." she murmured.

Kole's eyes widened.

"You remember me!" she said, grinning. "Hey, Raven! You were wrong! She _does _remember me!"

"She's _awake_!"

Terra tried to bring the world into focus as three more figures, all farther away, and therefore blurry, seemed to appear out of thin air in front of her.

"_Focus eyes. Focus, focus, focus." _

Miraculously, the blonde's mental chanting seemed to have an affect on her vision. As soon as she could see clearly, she blinked in surprise, and immediately wished she hadn't.

"Sarasim, Argent," Terra nearly choked when she saw the last person. "R-r-raven."

"_Damn you terrified squeaky voice, damn you."_

"Terra, before we start explaining what happened, how much do you remember?"

The girl in question blinked for a moment before furrowing her brow in concentration.

"Um, I remember trying to stop the volcano, then I remember… not being able to move… or breathe… no… not _needing_ to move or breathe… I think I turned myself into stone. Then there was a bright white light… then you three…" she glanced at Sarasim, Argent, and Kole. "Then… nothing."

She thought she saw a shadow of disappointment flit across their faces for a moment, but it disappeared before she was sure she really saw it.

"Well, you covered pretty much all the important "what's", so maybe we should just move directly to explaining the "how's"." Raven said, sitting down next to her.

"That would be helpful." Terra agreed, nodding.

The sorceress nodded back. "Alright. So, since the turning-yourself-to-stone part is pretty much self-explanatory, We'll just skip to the bright light, shall we?"

Terra nodded again, idly wondering how much nodding had and would be done tonight.

"I'm fairly certain that light was me banishing the demon Trigon, my father, from this dimension."

Terra blinked once… twice… three times.

"Why do you guys get to do all the fun stuff without me?"

* * *

"Do you think you get it now?"

Terra thought for a moment, frowning.

"I think so. You" she nodded to Raven. "And the other titans were trying to find a way to free me after I turned to stone. Then, you had to stop for a while to focus on your father, who came to this dimension, took over, and turned everyone on earth to stone. Then, you managed to banish him back to the hell he came from, and turned everyone back. And, since I was stone, I was changed back too. But, since I wasn't turned to stone by the demon, it only partly affected me. Which means that I've been turning from stone to human, back and forth, every few months for the past year. The last time I was human, I met you three," a nod toward guess who. "And, after I turned back, you found out about the whole stone to human thing, talked to Raven, and managed to find a way to free me permanently. Then you guys brought me- where are we exactly?"

"The master bedroom of the currently unoccupied room 108 in an apartment complex Argent's father owns."

"-Brought me to the master bedroom of the currently unoccupied room 108 in an apartment complex Argent's father owns."

Kole nodded. "that's right."

Terra turned to Raven.

"You guys have really been looking for a way to free me all this time?"

"Yes."

"Even you?"

"Yes." the tightness in her voice made Terra a little afraid that Raven was daydreaming about what would have happened if, during their fight, Terra's control had faltered _just _enough for Raven to get free. And _get at her_.

When Raven left to answer a knock at the door, Kole turned to Terra.

"Terra? Ummm…. There's something else we wanted to tell you."

"What?"

The three other girls shifted uncomfortably on the designer sofa for a few minutes before Argent sighed.

"Love, there's no gentle way to put this, so we're just going to say it: Raven stole your boyfriend."

"Good."

Caught off guard by this statement, the three girls stared at her for a moment. Or rather, four girls, as Raven had just reappeared in the doorway, and had obviously heard everything both girls had said.

"…Good?"

Terra nodded.

"As much as he means to me, I don't think I can ever trust myself around him again after all the times I've hurt him. As friends? Yes. As something more? I'm not sure. I don't want to risk it. I wouldn't be able to handle the guilt. And I sure as hell wouldn't be able to risk hurting him again by telling him all that to his face."

Sarasim reached out to cover Kole's ears.

"Watch your language! There are extra-virgin ears present!"

It would be impossible for an outsider to imagine how darn _good_ the laughter felt to the five young heroines after the serious descussion earlier, and the tension of the past few moments.

"If what you said is the truth…" Raven started, as the laughter died down. "Then I think you could just tell him. Once, back when we were still trying to get you free, he told me that he wanted only two things. The first was for you to be alive. The second was for you to be happy."

Terra was silent.

"Oooooor, you could wait for a while for more of your memories to come back. By that time, who knows? You might remember something that could help you tell him. Or you might change your mind."

"That last one isn't very likely." Terra scoffed. "But… a little time would be nice, if I could walk around town without worrying about him seeing me."

"Don't you worry 'bout that, love. We'll 'andle it. Right now you just need to focus on resting."

Terra smiled at Argent.

"Rest does sound really good right now."

"Then you should try to get some. And girls," Raven said, turning to the other three. "_He's _here."

For some reason, this bit of information seemed to worry the others slightly.

"Who's _"He"_?" Terra asked.

"Someone who's not as important as you trying to get some sleep right now."

"Alright, alright. I can take a hint. 'Night."

* * *

Terra didn't fall asleep right away, opting instead to think about Beast Boy, and the things she had said about him. And herself.

"_I lied before, guys. It _is _likely that I'll change my mind. But it's just as likely that I won't. I like BB, but I'd just feel afraid around him if we were anything but friends. On the other hand, I think I remember loving someone else, sometime during one of the times I was human, before I met you three. The trouble with that is, I can't remember anything about that time, not even who he was." _

She sighed, and switched to trying to sort out her feelings. Whenever Terra did this, it sometimes helped to compare her feelings to something earth or rock related. But, as she could think of nothing earth related to compare her current feelings to, she settled for something similar. The sea.

"_I just feel like there's some kind of "storm at sea" blowing my mind into a mess. My thoughts are like waves tossing and rolling and trying to tear each-other down, and my mixed up feelings aren't helping. We can just say the feelings are the hundred-mile-an-hour winds mixing up the sea even more." _Terra groaned as another pounding headache split her skull. _"And the headaches are the chicken that gave salmonella poisoning to the crew of the ship sailing on our little metaphorical ocean." _She thought, irritated. _"I just need time to let the wind settle, calm the waves down," _Boom, boom, boom._ "and to throw out that darn chicken."_

She finally got fed up with the headaches and focused on going to sleep. As she dozed off, she listened to the soft drone of voices outside the door, and her sleep-muddled mind managed to catch a few words.

"_-that she couldn't remember."_she managed to pick up from Raven's voice.

"_It's alright." _that must have been _Him,_ as he was the first male voice she'd heard so far.

"_I didn't really expect-"_

Whatever _He _didn't expect, she would never know, as she fell asleep at that very moment, wondering where the heck she'd heard that voice before.

**A/N: The bold/italicized/underlined words at the top are all quotes from the show except the last one. See if you can guess who said them, and, as a bonus, what episodes I got them from. The italicized words after the quotes are thoughts, and the italicized/underlined words are when people are speaking in low tones, or when they are otherwise difficult to hear. This is the first time I've ever written a multi-chapter story, or a story of **_**any**_** kind, so please review and tell me what you think.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I wrote part of a parody of "Tik Tok" to describe my day yesterday! wanna hear it? *play's song* **

_**Woke up on my Birthday feeling like total crap,**_

_**I got a backache and it's that time of the month. **_

_**And now their testing the emergency broadcasting system,**_

_**And if they don't shut up then I'm gonna kill 'em.**_

_**I'm sayin' I'm in so much pain-pain, **_

_**Pounding in my brain-brain,**_

_**I think I'm goin' insane.**_

_**Yeah, my day was being yucky. **_

_**Eight to noon was sucky**_

_**'Till I started getting lucky.**_

_**Oh God, make it stop, **_

_**DJ turn the speakers off,**_

_**Last night, I couldn't write, **_

_**'Cause Grandpa stayed all night.**_

_**Oh-oh not really. Oh-oh not really.**_

**Yeah, my birthday sucked until my grandpa came over. And, since Rose broke the day after I uploaded the first chapter to this, I couldn't upload the new one (which was typed on my iPod) until we either fixed her or replaced her. Meet my new sidekick: Iris. Now, on to business.**

**Disclaimer: DC and WB own anything recognizable, I'm just a girl with a ****vocabulary big enough to eat Titans Tower and a laptop named Iris.**

_"Well team, we stopped Slade, saved our home, officially inducted Terra into __the Teen Titans, and have just survived the beginning of what will be an __all-night horror movie marathon. All in all, I think I speak for all of us when I say: this was a __**very**__ good day."_

_"A good day? A GOOD day?! Dude, are you KIDDING?! This was the best day in the HISTORY of the WORLD! Right Raven?"_

_"Sure." the half-demon replied in her usual monotone._

_"See? Even Raven thinks this was the best day ever!"_

_"Man, for once, I agree with him. This day was the best."_

_"I second that."_

_"Hear hear!"_

_Robin smiled. _

_"In that case," he said, standing up. "I purpose a toast. To the best day in __Titan's history-" he smirked. "-that didn't involve Beast Boy getting smacked __with a blowup mallet."_

_"DUDE!"_

_After a round of laughs, everyone raised their cups of soda and echoed the __toast._

_"To the best day ever."_

_Moments after the last person lowered their cup, the Titan's mainframe __announced a visitor. _

_"Who in the world-?" StarFire wondered as Cyborg pressed the button on his arm that would connect him to the Tower's intercom._

_"Uh, hello?"_

_"What in Poseidon's name was going on over here?! One moment I'm swimming __nearly __**eighty miles away**__, minding my own business, then suddenly all the fish __over here are screaming: "THE SEA FLOOR IS FALLING OUT"! Then, when I get here, I find a giant, barely refilled underwater trench circling the Tower, and the T-Sub's launching tube is. __**Completely. Totaled.**__ What the heck happened over __here?!"_

_Terra raised an eyebrow at the near-hysterical ranting on the other side of the intercom and looked questioningly at her teammates, all of whom now looked surprised and slightly sheepish._

_Cyborg looked sideways at the rest of the team._

_"We've got a lot of explaining to do." _

_"Ya think?!"_

_"That voice." Terra thought. "The one on the intercom. Why does it sound so __familiar?"_

_"Terra?"_

_"Not now bubby, I'm busy."_

_"You awake?"_

_"No."_

"Sahly, yah." Terra sighed, voice still slurred from sleep. "Why'dga hafta wayh me uh righ whea a wazza'bout ta rememer somethun'?"

... Blink.

"Come again?"

"Sadly, yah. Why'd you have to wake me up right when I was about to remember something?" She repeated slightly more clearly.

"Oh." Kole seemed to deflate a little at this. "Sorry."

Terra shrugged.

"S'okay." She said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"So, what's up?"

"Okay so remember how said that you would like a little time to wait for more of your memories to come back but you didn't want Beast Boy to be bugging you every time you were out? Well we think we've figured out a plan of sorts that would pretty much take care of that see we were talking about letting you stay in another city for a little bit while you were getting your memory back 'cause there's this thing called the VSHCRS which means "Victims of Superhuman Conflict Relocation System" and it helps people whose homes were wrecked by a superhero or super villain find places to stay until their homes are fixed see how it works is there are people in cities all over the world who volunteer to let people like that who can't afford a hotel temporarily stay with them until their house is repaired and all the volunteers in the system have had full background checks so it's completely safe and if you want we could sneak you into the system and we already came up with a cover story for you if you decided you wanted to try it do you want to?"

Terra blinked once, struggling to make sense of the rapid-fire barrage of words.

"Uh... Sure?"

Kole grinned.

"Great so we were talking about where you could go but we couldn't think of a place you could stay and then we remembered that there's a city in Maine called Steel City and there's a team of Titans there called the Titans East that you would be able to contact easily when you decide what you want to do and we looked over the volunteers there and there was one more place open and we thought you could go there and be reasonably safe from BB bugging you since it's on the other side of the country so we figured it was a perfect place if there ever was one so we started making plans for you to go there are you okay with that?"

"Yes."

"Great!" Kole chirped, finally slowing down to a speed where her listener could easily understand her. "So, how soon do you want to go?"

"As soon as I'm feeling up to it."

"Do you need us to get you anything for the trip?"

"No, thanks." Terra yawned. "All the stuff I need should be stuffed in a duffel bag and an oversized backpack hidden somewhere in the cavern where I was when I was a statue."

"Okay. Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"Yes please. I might be able to catch that last dream before it gets away from me."

"Alright. The rest of us are going to try to get some sleep to. Sweetie dreamies."

Terra smiled at her friend's personalized nighttime well-wisher.

_"Only you, Kole."_

"Sweet dreams to you too." she murmured as she returned to dreamland.

The next night, Terra laid on her new/temporary bed and tried to absorb the events of the day.

She had shown up late that afternoon at her temporary residence, a small, neat, two bedroom apartment belonging to a Dr. Whittier. She hadn't met him yet, but she had met his 7-year-old daughter, Rose, who had told Terra- no, Tara now- that her father was at the hospital, and probably wouldn't be back until late that night.

_"Not_ _that_ _I'm complaining or anything."_ Tara thought as she smiled across the room at the sleeping little girl she would be sharing a room with. In the few hours between Tara's arrival and Rose's bedtime, Tara and Rose had become the best of friends.

Tara shivered slightly. Despite her earlier good mood, the grim cityscape outside her window scared her a little. It was hard to look out at the dark,dirty, mile-high jumble of glass and steel and imagine that kind-hearted people like Rose could live here more than a month before the kindness was sucked out by the gray, sad-looking streets crowded with equally gray, sad-looking people.

And the height! Tara whimpered. The apartment was only three floors away from the top floor. And if Tara was afraid of anything, then that anything was heights. Not the breathtaking, soaring majesty of the many mountains she had known, but the tight, crowded, claustrophobic rows of straight, harsh cliffs of glass and metal, jutting up from the street in perfect right angles, filling the world as far as the eye could see. Left, right, backwards, forwards, even up. Nothing but the glittering, suffocating, filthy cliffs. It was enough to drive a person insane.

_ "I hate cities like this."_ she thought, getting up to close the curtains.

After returning to her bed, she decided to distract herself by going back over the cover story she had memorized.

Her name was Tara Marven. She was injured in an accident, and was suffering from amnesia that seemed to have been caused by the injury. She had no way of finding out who she was, as she had had no identification with her at the time, and had forgotten almost everything except her name. Since the accident she had been in had been caused by a super villain, the doctors at the hospital had suggested placing her in the VSHCRS until she was able to remember enough to find out who she was and where she lived, or until one of her friends or relatives were found. The story was short, fairly simple, and close enough to the truth. There was nothing for Tara to worry about. Everything was taken care of. Ehyep. Everything was-

_"-under control!" Terra whispered. "I've got everything completely under _

_control!" she let out a small, soft moan as she used her powers to keep the two ton rock from falling on the civilians under it. Or rather, try to keep it from falling. _

_She gasped as gravity won another two inches of distance._

_The Titans were near the outskirts of the city, taking down another petty villain. Terra had assigned herself to "evacuation duty", which basically meant guiding the crowd of civilians away from the battle zone, and saving anyone who seemed to be in danger of getting caught in the cross-fire. Like the family under the rock._

_She looked to the left. An empty street leading back into the city. She looked to the right. Empty dessert. _

_One giant heave to the right later, the rock was 20 yards away and, to Terra's relief, the family was safe. Their next-door neighbor's brand-new, one week old, and very expensive tool shed the rock had just flattened? Eh, not so much._

_"... I see ticked-off homeowners in my future."_

Tara gasped slightly as she woke up from the flashback. Everything was just as it was before. She was laying down. Indoors. With the curtains closed. And Rose sleeping peacefully on the other side of the room.

Tara took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life right now, but that flashback had reminded her of one thing. She was a hero, and nothing could change that. Not her years of running, not Slade, not her time trapped by stone walls and temporary life, and certainly not herself. She was a hero, and she was ready and willing to prove it.

She just hadn't figured out how yet.

**A/N: Reviews= motivation, motivation= longer chapters sooner. No motivation= me losing interest in this for long periods of time, like what happened to the sweater I've been knitting for the past year. And don't worry. By the next chapter, the plot will have made some REAL progress.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I just noticed how many mistakes I made in the last chapter. Heh, sorry. ... I'll... fix that... eventually. But, at the moment, I 'm more concerned with trying to get this and the next chapter up before I have to go back to school. Also, Rose's dad's name got cut out of the last chapter. So allow me to introduce him. *points at a brown haired, middle-aged man* this is Dr. William Whittier. He is a doctor. Hence why he was at the hospital in the last chapter. And he is **_**totally **_**not just some random person that I made up for the sake of the story.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans, poptarts, or the A/N from the last chapter. (**_**pleassssss **_**just forget that thing ever happened.)**

Tara blinked, mildly confused as to why the entire kitchen- mixing bowls, dishes and silverware, sobbing little girl and all- looked like a cross between a snowman battleground and the aftermath of a food fight. She glanced questioningly at the semi-alert man standing next to her, hoping he knew more about what was going on than she did. Judging from his absolutely hilarious "what-the-f*-I-mean-heck?" face, however, that hope was probably unfounded.

"Uh, Rose?"

She looked up, the strange, pale colored powder sticking to her tear-streaked cheeks and platinum blond hair.

"... What happened?"

She pointed at an empty box resting on the counter.

"You two were still asleep when I woke up so I decided to make pancakes as a surprise, but I couldn't open the pancake mix bag, and then it ripped and spilled all over the place."

At this point, the only thing Tara could think was: How on earth could that much pancake mix fit in that tiny little packet? But Dr. Whittier, despite his sleep-walker appearance, was still alert enough to notice the gap in his daughter's story.

"So, at what point did the fridge throw up all over the rest of the room?"

The little girls eyes widened as her gaze darted between the now empty fridge and her father before she made the best puppy face she could manage.

"Uh... I dunno."

After a quick cleanup session and an even quicker breakfast of poptarts, it was decided that the three of them would go to the grocery store to get more food and cleaning supplies. On the way to the store, Tara offered to get the groceries so that Dr. Whittier -or Will, as he insisted she call him- could take the two tasks that did not require more concentration than the human mind possesses: find the cleaning supplies and question his daughter on what _really _happened to the kitchen.

"Good luck." Tara said as they entered the store.

"Thanks." He chuckled. "I'll probably need all the luck I can ge- oh no."

Tara raised her eyebrow, impressed at how quickly kid had disappeared.

"Well... good luck anyway."

Tara stood by the door sometime later, waiting for Whittier Sr. and Wittier Jr. to come to the checkout.

_ "Wait a minute. Did I get the tomatoes?" _She thought, panicking slightly as she rummaged through the bags.

_ "Oh SNAP!"_ Her eyes darted around for a few moments before landing on a boy about her age who didn't seem busy.

"Hey, Red head! Kid with the comb!"

"Huh?" Apparently, Ginger had tuned out of his surroundings.

"Canyouwatchmybagsformeforafe wminutesthanks!"

"What?" And she was gone.

"Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes- Ooop, wet floor sign- tomatoes, tomatoes- AHA. There you are." She quickly gabbed two of the round, red fruits/vegetables and ran back toward the checkout counter. Sadly, however, she didn't get any farther than the wet floor sign.

*Slip*

*Slip*

"Whoh!"

"AHHH!"

*Crash*

*Splat*

*Smash*

*Thump thump*

"Oh my- sorry!"

"Lookit all the pretty colors." Tara giggled dazedly.

"Uh, are you okay?"

"Yep, I think so. You?" Tara said, blinking and shaking her head to clear away the stars as she instinctively grabbed the hand that entered her line of vision.

"Yeah."

"Good." She said, looking up to see who she ran into. The first thing she noticed was that it was a boy. The second thing she noticed was that, for some reason, his brown eyes seemed strangely out-of-place in his raven framed features. However, the second, and slightly unusual, thing was quickly forgotten as she noticed the third thing. Her tomatoes were mushed into his shirt.

"Oops. Uh, sorry."

"For what? Running into me? It's okay. It was my fault."

"No, sorry about _that_." She nodded to the boy's shirt.

"What?" He looked down. "Oh... uh... uh oh."

"What?" A little bit of egg yolk dripped off her nose. "Oh..."

About half an hour later, the two returned to the front of the store looking messy, rumpled, and angry as all hell.

"I can't believe it took us tree tries to get these _godforsaken_ eggs and tomatoes without dumping them on eachother or ourselves." Tara growled as she attempted to pick bits of red and yellow goo off her shirt.

"Yeah. Next time my roommate wants his _precious _eggs he can get them himself."

"Yep. I'm Tara by the way."

"I'm-"

"Hey, Garth!" Tara turned her head towards the new voice.

_ "Heh, what do you know? It's Comb Kid."_

She blinked as the red-head ran towards them.

"I thought you said you would only take a few minutes! Karen's getting mad! What were you-Whoh!" He stopped short for about three seconds before busting his gut laughing. "Holy crap! What the heck happened to you?"

Garth was silent as he glared at the shorter boy.

"I take it that's your roommate?"

"Regrettably." Garth sighed as he walked up to Comb Kid, who was still laughing like an idiot.

"Here are your _stupid_ eggs." He growled, shoving said food items at the laughing hyena. "And just so you know, I am _never_ shopping for you again."

"So? This was _so_ worth it!"

Tara rolled her eyes at him as she left to get her bags.

"Hey." She said to Will and Rose as they came back to the front. "Get everything?"

"Yep!" Rose chirped happily, skipping up to her. Tara smiled at her before looking questioningly at Will. "So, did you figure out how she up-ended the fridge all over the room?"

Will sighed. "According to her, the ghost did it."

"You guys don't have a ghost."

"According to her, "That's how sneaky it is!""

_ "He was familiar, wasn't he?"_

_ "Who?"_

Terra was dreaming. She had to be. There was no other logical explanation as to why she would be lying on her stomach, wrapped in a beach towel, on a flat-topped, grass-cushioned rock in the middle of the ocean sometime around midnight, talking to a small patch of mist as if nothing odd was happening.

_ "The guy from the grocery store. He seemed familiar, right?"_

_ "A little, but what do you care? Your just a patch of mist."_

_ "How do you know? Your dreaming. For all you know I could be your pink cat you found in Zanzibar back when you were a rhino."_

_ "Oh, shut up you." _She laughed, batting at the mist. To her surprise, she felt her fingers comb through what felt like strands of hair, before whatever it was ducked deeper into the mist, out of her reach.

_ "So, back to the point. What made him seem familiar?"_

Terra stared at the mist, her eyes searching through it as if looking at it long enough would make it drift away, revealing whoever the small cloud had been hiding. Rather than answering, she reached down again, waving her hands around in the fog.

_ "OW! AH! HEY!"_

_ "WHO THE HECK ARE YO- WAH!"_

Her sentence ended in that oh so dignified "WAH" due to the fact that she had grabbed onto whoever-it-was right before whoever-it was dived into the water, effectively waking her up from the dream, thinking: _"If I ever have that dream again I'm gonna MURDER that little *****."_

Someplace on the other side of town, someone else was waking up from the same dream thinking: _"GUUUUUUU! STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID!"_


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Yeah. this is how fast I am when I get obsessed. On a side note, do you think the fact that my fingers feel numb whenever I'm done typing is a bad sign? ... Ah I'm sure it's nothing. And about Terra's freak-out in the last chapter... She was attacking the mist because she was curious about what was in it, and she got angry because she thought the mist tried to dream-drown her. Besides, it was a dream. Actions and reactions in a dream aren't supposed to make sense. Moving on. **

**Disclaimer: As I am not being tortured by the Devil for cancelling Teen Titans, I can only assume that I don't own them. **

Tara sat on the beach, staring out to sea as she thought back over the past two weeks. For the first few days after she arrived in the city, she felt as if she was getting constantly harassed by her darn dreams. Even daylight didn't offer her any peace, as the dreams often took the form of sudden flashbacks. Whether she was reading, exploring the city, playing with Rose, making sand sculptures on the beach (she would have preferred sculpting professionally, with real clay and glaze, but even if she could afford the materials, she wouldn't know where to find them or a furnace where she could fire her finished work), hanging out with Garth (whom she had become good friends with), talking to Niki (Kole), Sara (Sarasim), and/or Toni (Argent) over the phone, or chatting with Will, the dreams were _everywhere_,_everyday_, _**ALL. THE. FREAKING. TIME.**_ But, at some point, she had realized that the dreams were all important or semi-important memories, and learned to tolerate them, and even, eventually, enjoy them. Especially the "mist-dreams".

Despite the bad first impression (*cough cough* themisttriedtodrownher *cough cough*), the mist-dreams turned out to be the most calming, memory-recovery-inducing, helpful, and polite dreams. How can a dream be polite, you ask? Well, for one thing, it would wait for you to fall asleep before it starts. That aside, Tara was actually a little disappointed that her favorite dreams were the only dreams that didn't come during the day. She enjoyed the mist-dream's beautiful natural settings, like the rainforest "ground floor tree-house", the daisy carpeted, willow shaded riverbank, the huge, rushing, yet calmingly quiet rainbow-shrouded waterfall, the warm, sunbathed jetty of stone sticking out into the sea, or, her favorite, the well-shaded desert oasis, much more than she enjoyed the grim, smoke-streaked skyscrapers or the filthy, polluted beach of Steel City. The dreams even seemed to know what kind of additions to add, like the daisies and willows (her favorite flower and tree). The fact that her conversations with "the mist" usually resulted in her remembering something was also an added bonus. The only downsides to the dream were the fact that the person she talked to was always hidden by mist, and that "the mist" always seemed a little disappointed at the end of each dream, as if the memories she regained as a result of the dreams were different from the ones it had hoped she would remember.

Tara sighed. _"He's not the only one who's disappointed." _She thought, throwing a stone and watching it as it skipped across the lake. She had been in Steel City for two weeks, and she was still no closer to figuring out what she would do with her life. she knew she wanted to continue hero work, but would she rejoin the Titans or go back to being solo the way she had been before the Titans. Would she let them know she was alive or would she keep it a secret until they found out, as she was sure they would? And if she did rejoin the titans, what then? She was most definitely _not_ interested in joining the original team, as she wanted to avoid seeing Beast Boy again for as long as possible. So, what would she do? On the other hand, what would she do if she went solo? Would she be a full time hero? Part-time? And where would she live? She certainly couldn't stay with the Whitiers for the rest of her life.

And, speaking of the Whitiers, what was with Will? One minute, he would seem perfectly normal, then she would turn around and he would be doing something she didn't understand at all, or he would be staring at her in a way that was just plain creepy. Not an "Are-you-a-sexual-predator?" creepy, as she was sure that a man like that would not have been allowed to raise a young girl. It was more of a "You-remind-me-of-someone-that-I-can't-exactly-remember-but-I-remember-they-weren't-nice." kind of creepy. That was also why she was starting to doubt that Will was actually a doctor. Garth had agreed with her when she told him about Will, but Garth was a little strange as well.

For one thing, whenever they met on the beach, he would always show up swimming. This was strange because, although Steel City was the first city Tara had been to aside from Jump where the nearby ocean was actually safe to swim in. Except from fall to winter, when the water was so cold, you would've had to be freaking insane to even _think_ about swimming in it without a specially insulated wetsuit. Garth, however, seemed perfectly comfortable wearing clothing made for early spring, even though it was early fall (Steel City talk for "eighty-below with hail"). Also, she was fairly certain that his "normal" body teprature would've sent anyone else rushing to the hospital in a panic. Which was why she had once asked him if he would mind if she used him as a hot water bottle. After a moment of surprise, he'd answered: "I guess not, since my roommates do that all the time." Coincidentally, that was also the day she discovered three other things about him: his skin was covered in microscopic, fish-like scales, he turned purple instead of pink when he blushed, and he wouldn't get angry with her if she got a sudden urge to tackle him.

"You know, if you were cold, I could've just loaned you my jacket." Tara grinned as she snuggled closer to her living electric blanket.

"Maybe, but that wouldn't have made that group of girls over there stop staring at you and drooling."

"... What girls?"

"Hmm, I must have chased them away. You can thank me later."

"I'm sharing my body heat with you. That's not a thank-you?"

"Good point, Scale Boy." Tara smirked. "Cool skin by the way."

He stiffened slightly next to her, and she could have sworn she heard him gulp.

"... Thanks."

"You're welcome. Good night."

"What?"

"I'm going to take a nap."

"... Here?"

"Yes."

"... Why?"

"Because it's latish and your warm and cozy and didn't say "Not on me your not". 'Night." She said, dozing off before he could argue.

_"... You're taking a nap..."_

_"Yep."_

_"... Next to Garth..."_

_"Mhmm." _For some reason, the mist turned slightly pink.

_"I'll just... go away now." _The dream slowly faded away.

**A/N: The next chapter will be longer, I promise. BTW, I'm probably going to rewrite/improve the first two chapters of this story sometime in the most-likely-distant future. *skims over chapters 1&2* Yeah, definitely room for improvement there.**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I seriously need to learn how to pace myself before I butcher one of these chapters... which already happened three chapters ago... twice in a row... ah heck, I fixed the second chapter, and I can re-write the first whenever I want. Besides, the 3rd and 4th chapters were the first time I ever wrote something story-related and didn't feel the need to scrap everything and start all over. Also, to everyone who read the first two chapters and weren't scared away, I thank you. Very much. And thank you The Cretin, for your review. It saved this story from the three-month long school-started-and-I-forgot-all-about-this period that probably would have happened. I bow to you. **

**Disclaimer: No, I don't own Teen Titans. But, judging from the quality of the TT shorts that are popping up everywhere, I feel as if it's my duty to go and steal them from the dummy who does own them before our heroes lose any more of their dignity. **

"OW! HEY! GETOFF!"

"Not until you let us see what it is!"

"If I wanted you to see it, I would have SHOWN it to you, now wouldn't I?!"

This was what could be heard in Steel City park early one Monday morning, the noise originating from four girls. These girls were, as you might have guessed, Tara, Niki, Sara, and Toni, who had met there just minutes earlier so they could spend the day together, but, obviously, that plan had somehow gone awry. The problem had, actually, started the night before, when Tara had fallen asleep next to Garth on the beach. When Tara woke up, she discovered that Garth had fallen asleep as well. Seeing this, she did something very, very, **very** stupid before she went back to sleep.

She took a picture.

Honestly, she didn't have any pictures yet, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

But, of course, fate decided to be cruel to her that day. How else could she have, just by freakin chance, decided to take another look at that picture to see if it could be used as blackmail material (their friendship had evolved to the point where such types of innocent teasing/torture were common occurrences) right when the other three girls showed up.

And, to her dismay, her former ability of secret-keeping seemed to have abandoned her during her time as stone.

And now, here they were, wrestling over the picture she had hoped to keep secret from the rest of the world, possibly including Garth. She was now convinced that _someone_ up there must hate her.

"Got it!"

"SARA!"

"Who's that?"

"Can I see?"

"NIKI!"

"Aww, that's so cute! Who's the guy in the picture, though? Is that Garth?"

"Le' me see!"

"OW! Hey!" Tara grunted as Argent climbed over her to get a look.

Seconds later, Argent whistled.

"Wow! That's 'im? Why the bloody 'ell 'aven't we met 'im yet? Please say 'e's single."

"TONI!"

"Oh, sorry, love. You 'ave dibs on 'im?"

The moment those words left her friend's mouth, Tara wished she could simply melt into the ground from humiliation. So she did.

"For the last time, we are just friends."

"The question is, how long are you going to stay that way?"

"FOREVER! Unless we stop being friends, or one of us dies or... or... we stop being friends!"

"And how does the fact that you two slept with each-other fit into that?"

"WHOH WHOH WHOH WHOH! SLEPT WITH? No, nononononononononono! Please please please please please PLEASE never say that again!"

"Fine. How does the fact that you two were_ sleeping next to_ each-other fit into that?"

"I was using him as a hot water bottle."

"...Pardon?"

"Really, it's like that guy's got a perpetual fever or something. He's _really_ hot."

"Ya' got that right, love." Argent snickered.

Tara groaned.

"Why does everything that comes out of my mouth have to come out so entirely _wrong_?"

"Bad luck?" Tara turned her head sharply to Kole, who was totally unaware that what she had just said could have been mistaken for sarcasm.

"But seriously, love. He. Is. _Hot_."

Tara simply buried her head in her arms and groaned again because, truthfully, she hadn't noticed Garth's looks until Argent had pointed them out. She'd only known him for two weeks, and she usually focused more on boy's personalities than on how they looked. Sure, she knew what he looked _like_. She just hadn't noticed that his physical appearance happened to be gourmet eye-candy. Before their conversation, Tara's hormones had been blissfully unaware that she had just spent most of the previous evening in close proximity to a very (_very_) attractive member of the opposite gender. Needless to say, that happy time was well and truly over.

"All three of you suck."

"But I didn't do anything."

Tara lifted her head off of the picnic table as she considered Kole's argument.

"Good point. Only two of you suck. And you two-" she snapped, whipping toward Toni and Sara. "not a word out of you."

The two in question smirked knowingly. After a few moments, Tara sighed and relaxed for the first time that day as blessed silence reigned at their picnic table. Until...

"Ooooo, look! There he is! Can you introduce us?"

Her eyes shot open and a bright blush crawled across her cheeks. The temporarily retired geokinetic re-buried her head in her arms, trying to get her latest wave of hormones under control.

"Toni, you do realize that you may have just murdered a beautiful friendship before it even reached its prime, right?"

"So, can we meet him?"

There were only two responses Tara could give her without succumbing to the urge to strangle her. A. throw a mud pie at her (she was wearing her new white shirt, too). or the slightly less satisfying B. blow a raspberry at her. To her disappointment, Tara realized that neither would be very mature or effective. Maybe the wind would blow something nasty in Toni's face...

"Did you get a sun burn?" Rose asked, kicking her feet as she fidgeted with a bit of her hair.

"No." Tara answered as she closed the door and hung up her coat, hoping the curt reply would satisfy the towheaded little girl.

"Then why is your face red?"

"A salesman selling spray-on red hair dye sprayed me in the face." She spouted, hoping her questioner would believe her.

Rose blinked, then grinned.

"Cool. Did he have any blue?"

"You dye your hair with it, not your skin. And really? Blue?"

"I can't draw well enough to make stuff look real."

Tara suppressed a snicker.

"You know, there's not a single thing about that sentence that I don't need explained."

"I can't think of any other way I'd know for sure if my redesign for the ompa lompa's is any good."

"...The ompa lompa's."

"Yep. they've got white hair and blue skin, and I already have white hair, so all I would need to do to see if my redesign is any good is spray-paint my skin blue."

Tara stood there for a moment, trying to decide whether she should call the mental institution, or simply laugh this off as one of Rose's jokes.

"Okay then." She said, valiantly fighting off the urge to laugh. "I'm just going to... go over here."

"Okay."

after a few moments of silence, Rose apparently decided she liked conversation better than studying the floor tiles.

"So, what do you want to do day-after-tomorrow?"

"Huh?" Tara thought out loud, wondering why Rose felt the need to ask her this, as she had already told her she was going to the aquarium with Garth.

"That's when Mrs. Kendlebrook said she wouldn't be able to babysit me, and you said you would be happy to."

Tara took a bit longer to process this tidbit of information than she normally would.

"... I thought that was the 24th."

Rose just blinked at her, a concerned look slowly growing on her face.

"Tara, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but-"

"The 24th _is_ the day after tomorrow, isn't it?"

"Uh huh."

**A/N: If school hadn't started, this chapter would have been a lot longer, and I may not have been as disappointed with it. As it is, I'm only posting it now because it's 1:00 AM the night before my 2nd day back to school, and I wanted to break up the time between now and the next chance I get to work on this. But I promise not to be one of those writers that leave for months at a time then come back with a sob story. **

**... Well, I'll do my best with the "not leaving for months" part.**

** On a side note, Argent's accent is_ flippin hard _to write.**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: The line breaks are malfunctioning. Also, drawing class is plotting to do one of two things to me. 1. Make me a Queen. 2. Kill me. I think 2 is the most likely outcome. Now, on to the part of this story that you actually care about.**

**Disclaimer: He who says he owns Teen Titans, yet is not Warner Bro's, DC comics, ect, is a mother frickin' liar.**

"... And I will be indebted to you until the day I die. And beyond that. If I die, I will bring myself back from the dead, sign over my soul and become your eternal servant."

"And you have officially started to make me scared for your sanity. Please, stop. I really didn't mind Rose coming along. It was fun."

Tara sighed contently, snuggling deeper into her coat.

"You are one of the coolest friends I have ever had."

"And you are the first friend I've ever made that I _didn't_ meet during the less-than-blissful times of my life."

"Well you... is it raining?"

"No. It doesn't rain in autumn here. It snows."

_Whoosh!_

"And what might this be?" Tara screamed, struggling to be heard over the sound of the torrential downpour hitting the pavement.

"This would be something that is affectionately called: "GET OUT OF THE SLEET BEFORE IT KILLS YOU, MORONS!" by the many morons who live in this city willingly, myself included."

"And, judging from the name you've given it, I'm guessing that this sleet can kill you?"

"Yes, yes it can."

Tara nodded her comprehension.

"Shall we run for our lives to the nearest source of shelter?"

"Yes, by all means, let's."

*linebreak*

Fifteen minutes later, the two finally dragged the sleet-soaked, ice-rimmed deadweight of their bodies under the "nearest source of shelter". Otherwise known as an old pier built into the cliff face.

"Why can't you be cold too?" Tara moaned, flopping down on the sand to lean her back against the rock. "Just to make things fair?"

He shrugged apologetically.

"Because then there would be no one to make sure you didn't freeze to death?"

Tara simply grunted in reply, sliding sideways to where he sat, feeling herself starting to doze off. Was drowsiness a bad thing in these conditions? If it was, Tara highly doubted she Would be capable of caring at that moment.

"I'm just glad Mrs. Kendlebrook came home before we left. Will would _freak_ if Rose got stuck out here with us."

"Yep."

Then there was silence, broken only by the violent storm, the raging sea, and the sound of Tara moving closer to Garth and swiping his coat.

"What did you mean when you said that I was the first friend you didn't meet during-"

"The less-than-blissful times of my life?" He sighed, thinking for a moment. "I've never told you much about myself, have I?"

Tara shook her head.

Garth sighed again, leaning back against the wall of stone. For a few moments, he simply sat there, thinking.

"... What do you want to know?"

Tara thought for a moment.

"Who was your first friend?"

Garth smiled slightly.

"My adoptive father."

"Adoptive?" What about your real one?"

"Never knew him. Never knew my mother either. And, since they more likely than not left me to die in the middle of... the city, I don't think I really want to. Somehow, I managed to live on my own for seven years before my adoptive dad found me. After that, my life was pretty much business as usual, nothing really important enough to mention."

Tara stared at him for a full minute before speaking again.

"How the heck are you still alive?!"

"Truthfully, I have absolutely no idea. So, have you found out anything about Will?"

Tara looked at him, wondering for a moment if she should press him for an explanation, before rejecting that idea. She knew firsthand that pressing someone was never a good idea, and she was smart enough to tell that this line of conversation had died a very quick death.

"Nothing beyond the fact that he dyes his hair and has a glass eye."

"A glass eye?"

"Mmhumm. God your warm."

"You're going to take a nap again, aren't you?"

"Darn right I am." She said, somehow finding a way to scoot even _closer_ to his furnace-like body. "'Night."

Garth sighed in resignation.

"Good night."

*linebreak*

It was a weird dream. True, dreams were, by their very nature, weird, but this one made no sense.

She was running away from Slade, which was not unusual in and of itself. What was unusual was that his mask kept shifting in and out of focus, leaving a white and peach colored blur (Slade has white hair = everything the titans know about Slade). Then, suddenly, She's in the cavern where she turned to stone, looking up at the empty space where the statue-her had been standing. Except it wasn't empty space. Where Terra had once stood, there was now a statue of Rose, standing, clutching the straps of the backpack slung at her back, looking up at nothing with an expression of horrified realization. Wide-eyed, Terra bounded toward her, intent on releasing her from her stone shell, when suddenly, everything changed again. She was kneeling next to Beast Boy, cradling his upper body in her arms, staring helplessly at the heavy iron collar around his neck, the S-shaped brand burned into his skin, right over his heart, and various other signs of abuse and degradation.

_"Why?" _She thought. _"Why did this happen?"_

Then, a little voice rose from the ashes of a gladly forgotten memory.

_"Perhaps she wanted to keep you as a pet." _Slade's voice roared in her mind like a malevolent, long-forgotten monster. Then, there wasn't even enough time for tears to form before the dream shifted once more.

She stood on the Titans island, facing the sea, a voice drifting slowly through her mind like a fond memory, whispering words that she had longed to hear ever since she started running, a chorus of promises that no one, not Slade, not the Titans, not even Beast Boy himself would ever dare to do more than imply and reword, spoken in a murmuring voice as gentle, kind, and genuine as Beast Boy's, but as firm, steady, and dependable as Slade's (had seemed), with a bit of leniency that told her it would step back as far as she told it to whenever she said the word, and a soft, achingly tender note that told her that anything that was meant to harm her was blasphemy to it. _I need you. I'll help you. I know you. I'll protect you. I care about you. I won't lie to you. I'm not scared of you. I don't blame you. I believe you. I trust you. I love you. _There was nothing different about the way the last three words were spoken, but the meaning behind them meant they snuck up on her like a hunting predator, jerking her eyes open to one of Steel City's dirty allies, a scene that was inexplicably kaleidoscoped by what seemed to be a coral reef. The extreme contrasts between the dark, dirty city and the fresh, clean sea view left Terra feeling dizzy and confused, then alarmed as she thought she heard a child crying softly, a sound that just barely qualified as "normal" in the city, and most defiantly didn't belong anywhere _near_ a coral reef. To her relief, her surroundings turned black, a dim, flat, purplish light illuminating the area a bit, revealing the reassuringly familiar sight of the mist. Her worry returned, however, when she realized that the source of the crying _was_ the mist. then, suddenly, the blackness was blown away, taking the mist with it. In its place was one of the foggy, deserted streets that had once been the way Jump City had looked for a short time. She stumbled, half conscious, and felt herself fall into the reassuring, supportive arms that she didn't remember ever encountering in the defeated city.

_"It's okay," _She heard him say. _"We'll find a way to fix this."_

Then, the images and fictional memories were gone, leaving only a disembodied voice behind.

_"He hurt you." _she heard in sad, wistful thoughts that were not her own. _"He hurt you, he broke his promise to be your friend, he turned away during the one time you needed him the most, you broke each-others hearts, you've both moved on, he never even said he loved you, and yet he's still the only one you see. You won't even remember anyone else." _a sigh. _"If I was given the chance to stop everything that happened to you, I swear to you that I would." _And with that, the dream began to end, despite Terra's attempts to stay asleep.

As the last remnants of her dream were blown away by the waking world, she realized something was missing.

"The sleet's stopped." She said, turning to Garth.

"Mmm?" The tired, sleepy boy said, raising his head.

"The sleet's stopped."

"Oh."

Tara looked at the position of the moon.

"It's pretty late. I should head home. Even though Rose is staying with the babysitter overnight, Will is probably home and worrying about where I am."

"I should probably get home too."

As they walked to the street where their paths would diverge, Tara turned to him.

"Thanks for tonight, Garth. It was fun."

"Even getting attacked by the weather?"

Tara grinned.

"Even that. goodnight, Garth." She said, turning down her street.

"Goodnight, Tara."

*linebreak*

Tara had already gotten home to the darkened apartment, changed, and gotten into bed, wishing that the only clean PJs she had had been something warmer than a yellow T-shirt and a pair of white shorts, when she heard him.

"Hello Terra. Miss me?" Slade said.

**A/N: And the really good part of the plot begins. This is also when the chapters begin to regain their former length. I included a few things from the** **comics earlier in the chapter. ...Well, it's really more like a few things from Wikipedia, but not the point. The point is, I spent SO much time trying to figure out how I would write this chapter, I think I spent more time thinking instead of sitting my butt down and writing it. But hey, it was my first full week back at school, cut me some slack. After I finish this story, I strongly suggest that you come back to this chapter to reread the dream part. Now, on a completely unrelated note, I demand that you go find and listen to the song "I'm Coming Home" by Ramen Karimloo, if only because you owe it to yourself to know of this awesome song's existence. The fact that my sister's obsessed with Ramen Namethatsfrickinhardtospell has something to do with it as well.**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: :D EEEEEEEEE! SOMEONE THINKS THE FIRST STORY I'VE EVER WRITTEN THAT WASN'T SCRAPPED THE SAME DAY IS AWESOMENESS! *Does a happy dance before exploding from overdose of sheer happiness* Thank you Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06 for your lovely review. You got me PUMPED! You got me READY to DO THIS THING! ... and then a headache/backache/very late dinner forced me to postpone this until morning. My deepest apologies. Enjoy the chapter, and I hope that it will be unaffected by my giant happy high and mad giggling. Also, remember the holo-ring Cyborg had in Deception? Using those in a story is **_**really**_** helpful, isn't it? **

**Disclaimer: I'm too lazy to think of a way to say I don't own the Teen Titans, so I do. *is dragged away by the police* I WAS KIDDING!**

Aqualad was one of the most level-headed, rational, and sensible members of Titans East. Any Titan could tell you that out of all the Titans, he was (ironically) the one who acted the least strange. So you can understand why the rest of the team was so worried when, for the second time that week, he came home wearing normal clothes and a holo-ring, looking dazed, half asleep, grinning like a goofball, and completely oblivious to his surroundings.

"... Garth?"

"Huh?" He said as Bumblebee's voice brought him back to reality.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine, why?"

"Well, Garth, I'm not the detective of the group, but you did walk into the wall on your way in."

"Oh, did I?" He said, looking back at the wall next to the front door, which now sported a brand-new dent. "Oops."

"Garth, are you sure your alright?"

"I'm fine. I'm just a little tired. I think I'm going to go to sleep." he answered, walking to the stairs leading down to the next level, the only floor in the tower with windows below the water level.

Speed-walking into his room, he hurriedly shut the automatic door, locked it, and leaned back, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal.

_"Why do I torture myself like this?"_ he thought. _"It's not as if spending time with her pretending to be normal will make her remember any faster. In fact, so far it's done __mi'ta'lik__." _**(A/N: **_**mi'ta'lik**_** is Atlantean for "jack squat")**

He sighed, slowly moving to start changing.

_"It's not as if it would help, anyway," _He thought, beginning the mental lecture he had been giving himself every day since he "met" Tara. _"If she did remember, I'd probably take away my own right to look her in the eye and speak to her anymore, since-"_ His line of thought stopped when he finished changing for bed and realized something. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, irritated with himself.

_"I forgot I was wearing my uniform under clothes and holo-ring. Great." _He thought, removing the ring, revealing his blue and black uniform under his identically colored T-shirt and shorts. _"Now, not only do I feel like a coward, I feel like an idiot, too."_ He probably would have continued berating himself, if his communicator's ringing cell-phone mode hadn't attracted his attention (Cyborg had added a cell-phone mode to the new communicators, among other things.)

"Hello?"

"Garth." He stiffened.

"Tara?" He said, concerned by the fear and near-panic in her voice. "What's wrong?"

"Garth, I need help." Her voice was interrupted by deep, wheezing breaths, not unlike the way a runner would fill his lungs with air after a long run. "I need some kind of transportation, and I need somewhere to go." Another wheeze. "I wouldn't normally ask you for this, and I know you told me I can't know where you live for some reason, but-"

"Forget about that." He said, sliding the holo-ring back on his finger, despite the fact that he would undoubtedly attract attention by running around in one of the coldest cities in America right after sleet storm **(A/N: that is how one would describe it, right?)** wearing only a pair of PJ's better suited to a Florida summer. "Where are you now?"

"Just go to the apartment building, you'll know where I went from there."

"I'm on my way." He told her. "Don't worry."

The last thing he heard before he hung up was Tara's whispered "thank you".

*linebreak*

If Terra hadn't been running away from a madman while trying to staunch the bleeding from a gash in her side, she would have been banging her head on a wall right then.

_"Uhhhhhhhhg! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid MORON!"_ She mentally screamed at herself, chanting insults that were only partly justified. _"How could you NOT have realized it before he told you?! One eyed mask = one eye. White hair + brown hair dye = brown hair. Guy Who's Acting Weird + former superhero = BLARINGLY OBVIOUS BAD-GUY! MORON, MORON, MORON!" _

She closed her cell-phone as quietly as she could, briefly wondering why Garth had been the first person she'd thought to call.

"Yes Terra," The smirking, malevolent voice said from behind her, whipping her around as effectively as any physical force. "Call your friend. It'll save me the trouble of hunting him down to clear up the last non-super powered loose end." Her eyes widened in horror as the meaning of his words spread through her mind like a poisoned fog.

"No!" she shouted, eyes glowing golden for the first time in nearly three years. She ripped massive pieces of pavement from the ground, flinging them at the man, who avoided them with contemptuous ease. He slammed her into the wall behind her, causing even more dizziness than the blood-loss had already caused.

"Don't worry, Terra," He mocked her, pressing her against the wall. "I'll let him know why he has to die before I kill him."

Terra felt a slight pressure on her right shoulder as he pressed down on a specific area of skin, causing an agonizing pain to shoot through her, reaching right down to her core.

_"How did he do that?" _she wondered as he released her, letting her crumble to the ground. _"That wasn't even a pressure point, so what-" _Her questions were answered the moment she opened her eyes.

"No." she breathed, staring at the gray-gloved hands of her apprentice uniform.

"Did you really think it just went away?" He said, taunting her further. "The suit is a part of you, Terra. you can't get rid of it that easily. And when your little friend comes," He leaned in close, yanking her head up by her hair to make sure she would hear him. "the last thing he'll see is the person you really a- UHG!"

Terra's eyes, clenched closed against Slade's voice, shot open in surprise as a massive wave came out of nowhere, sending Slade flying to the other end of the ally, smashing him into a brick wall. Her hand shot to her shoulder almost of its own will, desperate to hide her uniform from the world. It took longer than it had felt for the gray armor to flicker from existence, seconds ticking by unheeded except to wonder why it was taking so long.

_"Whatever makes the suit disappear must have been damaged somehow."_ she thought as the steel-colored horror retreated from the world of later, she felt a new pair of arms wrap around her waist from behind, pulling her to her feet and practically dragging her out of the ally and down the street.

"RUN!"

Terra blinked, her savior's shout barely penetrating the slowly growing haze encasing her mind.

"Garth? What was that? How did you get here so fast? What-"

"Not now." He shouted over the sound of another water jet shooting behind them.

They continued to run until he pulled her into the relative shelter of a depilated building.

"Garth, you have to get out of here!" She said, violently grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. **(A/N: Since she freaks out and overreacts so much in the show, I'm just kind of assuming that she gets hysterical more easily than other people. No dissing intended.) **

"Shhh, it's okay Tara." He said, pulling her closer and stroking her hair soothingly. "It's okay. Your safe. Everything's okay."

"Garth, you don't understand!" She practically screamed, squeezing fistfuls of his shirt as she started panicking.

"Tara-"

"That was Slade. He's after me, and he's after you now, too!"

"Tara-"

"He's going to kill you and- and- I don't even KNOW what he wants to do to me! We have to get away! Now!"

"Tara-" He said, trying to calm her down, but only succeeded in freaking her out even more as he rested his hand on her shoulder - causing the proof of her crimes to reintroduce itself into the visual world.

"My name's not Tara!" she said as she felt her metaphorical chains reconstructing themselves. "I lied to you!"

"Tara-"

"Garth, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" She sobbed, neither realizing or caring that she had said the same thing to Beast Boy the night she betrayed him. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

"Tara-"

"I'm not Tara! I'm-"

"_Terra_." He said, stressing each syllable of the name of the girl who had betrayed an entire city.

Her head shot up, blue eyes locking with brown the moment before they faded to black and white.

"I _know_."

**A/N: Queen of the cliffies. :) Sorry I didn't have this up earlier, but I got distracted by things like my E-mail, the dictionary speller, and my yet-to-be-finished drawing homework (I already skipped drawing glasses, I can't afford to fail drawing noses, too!) Also, in case you didn't get the hint, Dr. William Whittier was Slade. And before anyone says: "THAT'S IMMPOSIBLE!", I would like to remind you that this is SU-LADE, the third most all-powerful being next to Batman and God. I would also like to state that he was only unaware of who Garth is because he never met him. Also, this was the FUNNEST chapter to write yet! Hope you like!**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: (ITIP has just read the third review she has ever gotten in her life. Prepare for a very happy A/N)**

**... :) ... :') ... :'D I got two beautiful reviews, two chapters in a row. And they called chapter 7 fantastic. I have discovered the true meaning of happiness, and must find and/or make up more happy emoticons to visually express this intense happiness I'm feeling, because words are not enough. But, as I have minor ADD, doing so now may lead to me somehow ending up reading about weasels, so I'll just write another chapter instead. Now, I shall prove my ADD. I just realized that the song "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction could have been co-written by AL and dedicated to Terra. I would also like to say to Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06, The Cretin, and everyone else who kept reading my story long enough to get to the good part: Thumbs up. b (-_-) d**

**I am officially more random than my twin sister.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans, but I can proudly say I own the plot.**

Terra was in a state of shock. Not only had she just discovered that the man who had given her a home for the past _few weeks_ was the man she never wanted to see again as long as she lived, her best human friend wasn't human after all, and both had known who she was the entire time, but she also found out something almost even more mind-blowing.

Remember that building they were in when we last saw them? That's where the Titans East hid their "elevator to the front door".

Which was where Aqualad was standing at that moment, holding Terra bridal-style (she had briefly passed out a few moments prior, and was no longer allowed to stand by herself) and waiting impatiently for the elevator to get to the front door level.

"Terra." He spoke softly, not wanting to startle her. "When we get to the bottom, there's going to be a fairly long hallway going through the cliff to the bottom of the tower, and then there's an open-air walkway going around the tower to the door. If I go to fast, or if I hurt you by moving too much, please tell me."

Terra nodded and mumbled something he couldn't hear, but sounded like a question.

"What?"

"How did you find me so fast?" She repeated in little more than a whisper.

"Remember the phone-number I gave you?"

She nodded again.

"That was the number for my communicator. And you already know that they can trace anything that calls them."

"The communicators are phones now, too?"

"Yep." He said as the elevator stopped.

"I'm going to start moving now. Okay?"

"Okay." She murmured.

He slowly started walking as the elevator doors opened.

*linebreak*

"And you didn't tell us about this before _because_?"

Aqualad shrugged, his attention solely on the blond girl lying in one of the hospital beds in the sick bay.

"She didn't want anyone else to know."

Bumblebee blinked.

"Then why do _you_ know?"

He shrugged again.

"Lucky guess." He replied, turning to her. "So, do you think you can you do it?"

Bumblebee pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"It'll be a bit hard since it's connected to her nerves system, but three years in stone have eroded the circuits enough for me to be able to remove the stuff without hurting her. Her skin will probably be more sensitive to pain for a while, though, and if I do it before the painkillers have taken effect, then it's gonna hurt like hell." She said, checking the clock. "Alright, ready."

*linebreak*

The next morning, Terra woke to the smell of her lifelong friend.

_"I smell cinnamon."_

Sitting up slowly, Terra studied her surroundings. She seemed to be in a hospital room, judging from the clean white walls, clean, white tiled floor, and the neat white beds. Then, her attention was captured by the source of the heavenly smell that woke her.

Cinnamon rolls.

Now, there is something you should know about Terra. She loves cinnamon. It is her favorite smell, flavor, spice, etc. If there was a religion that worshiped cinnamon, she would join it without hesitation. Keeping that in mind, I should not have to tell you that the moment she saw those cinnamon rolls, she had no doubt that she had arrived at heaven on earth.

She picked up the small red note card set neatly next to the plate.

_We heard you liked cinnamon._

_Hope you enjoy._

_~The Team~ _

After the first bite, Terra decided that the entire team were gods.

"Good cinnamon rolls, aren't they? 'Specially considering the guy who made 'em didn't even know what baking was 'til he was eleven." Terra looked up in surprise at the insect themed girl who had suddenly appeared in the doorway.

She stepped inside, holding out her hand.

"I'm Bumblebee. Nice to meet'cha."

"Hi." Terra said, shyly shaking her hand.

"So, AL's a good baker, isn't he?"

Terra looked down at the plate.

"Aqualad made these?"

"Yeah. Didn't he say so on the card?" Terra wordlessly handed Bumblebee the red slip of paper.

"Yep," She chuckled. "That's him."

"How can you tell?"

"First of all, it's just like him to do something and not care whether or not he gets the credit. Second of all, the twins would've just put a smiley face on the card, and Speedy would've not made them in the first place and said he did. Third of all, if it was anyone on this team except him, they would've been God-awful."

Chuckling, Terra asked: "So, I take it that he's the cook around here?"

"Eh, fifty-fifty. Speedy's a good cook, he just burns up the stove when he tries to bake." They shared a laugh at this.

"Besides, Garth's been doting on you ever since you got here."

"Really?"

"Yeah. He's the one who asked me to get your armor off."

Terra looked down, stared at her arms and hands for a full thirty seconds, then looked back up at Bee.

"...You got it off."

"Yep."

It is rare for Terra to give a person a tackle-hug, and even rarer for a situation to call for one so much that she would later readily admit to having given one to that person. This was one of those rare times.

"THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!"

**A/N: And here we see Aqualad being the gentlman he is. :)**

**...Yeah, this chapter is short. But the weekend's over, and I'm not sure if I'll be updating during the week. And I'm certainly not going to leave you for a week with a cliff-hanger. Screw building suspense, I'm not that evil. Also, double update today. 'Cause that's how awesome I am. **


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: I feel terrible. I promised myself that I would upload at least once every weekend, and today, **_**Saturday**_**, I almost forgot. And I left you with such a stub of a chapter, too. :( **

**But never fear! I didn't forget. And I am proud to present to you the ninth chapter of The Oasis.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Teen Titans, then Aqualad would have met Terra in the show, Jericho would have been introduced earlier (him, Beast Boy, and Aqualad are tied as my favorite guy characters), there would be twice as many seasons, each with twice as many episodes, and the last season wouldn't have ended in a cliffhanger. As you can see, I do not own them.**

"Is she okay?"

Bee smirked and rolled her eyes.

"Calm yourself, Waterboy, she's fine. She went back to sleep about five minutes ago."

"_Back _to sleep?" Aqualad said, perking up. "She was awake?"

"Excited, are we?" Bee observed, smirking again.

He blushed slightly, despite his attempts to stop it.

"So, Has she met Speedy and the twins yet?"

"Yep. Shafty came by to see why I was down here for so long, and M & M came to drop off the odds and ends they pilfered for her from her room back at the original T-Tower. By the way, did you know she speaks Spanish?"

"No." He paused for a moment. "Uh, did the twins tell her about"

"Rose? Uh huh. Lucky you thought to send them over to the baby-sitters place before you left. I don't even want to think about what might have happened if Slade got to her before they did." She said, shivering slightly. "And it's a good thing Robin didn't think to ask how we found out Slade was here. We'd never have been able to get rid of Rose's false memories and find out who she really was without them."

"We'd also never have guessed, either. Who would've thought Slade would try to pass off a _Titan's little sister_ as his daughter?"

"Yeah. And the _really_ scary thing about all this is that we didn't even know Slade was back. Jericho almost had a heart-attack when we told him that his sis was with _Slade_ for almost _four weeks_."

"I can imagine." He sighed. "But at least his family lives in the same city Titans North is stationed in... Will be stationed in... Anyway, their mom said that Rose would be staying with the team until we've made sure Slade won't bother her again."

"That's good." They were silent for a moment.

"So, what're you planning on doing with Terra's apprentice get-up?"

"I was thinking when she feels better, we could all go out and burn it."

"That's not a bad idea." Bumblebee laughed. "We could even bring marshmallows."

Garth grinned back. "Sounds like a plan."

*linebreak*

There were four things Terra absolutely _detested_ from the bottom of her heart and soul:

1. Nightmares.

2. Slade.

3. Reminders of her time as Slade's apprentice.

4. Nightmares _about _Slade and her time as his apprentice.

So it was just her luck that, on her first night of real freedom, she was getting harassed by all four.

_"Go away."_ She half growled, half cried, curled up on the bed in the room she had slept in as Slade's apprentice. _"Go __**away**__. I'm not afraid of you. I've beaten you before, and I'll beat you again."_

_"Silly girl."_Terra's hands pressed themselves harder over her ears, fingernails digging into her scalp, trying to block out the sound of his voice, the smug, inhumanly persuasive, and artfully comforting and gentle tones that only now revealed their undertones of selfishness and deadly purpose. _"If you "beat" me, then why am I still here?"_

_"Leave. Me. __**ALONE**__!"_ She screamed, lashing out verbally at the cold, steel-gray room.

_"If you insist."_ he said, sadistic amusement lacing his voice. The room faded away, replaced by a tall, leaden-gray cliff... uneven, rocky ground... lightning flashing in the boiling storm clouds overhead... white noise made by crashing waves diluting all other sounds... and...

_"No."_ She sobbed, her legs carrying her toward the scene of her latest heartbreak.

Slade had left her alone, alright. In more ways than she wanted.

_"No."_ This time, the plea came out as a feeble whimper as she stumbled to a stop, eyes taking in each painfully twisted shape, mind working against her will as it mapped out the path each shape had taken down the cliff.

Speedy. Tripped at the top. Fell. The slight slope of the cliff-side providing just enough solid ground to cause continuous injury, but not enough to slow or stop his fall.

Mas and Menos. Tripped as well, trying to save Speedy. The only difference between him and them being one landing on the other when they reached the bottom.

Bumblebee. Wings shot by someone standing below her. Free-fell onto the rocks.

_"I just met them. I barely knew them. This isn't __**fair**__."_

Then, suddenly, she realized that there was someone missing. She noticed a dark, thick streak of color on the rocks, purplish against its slate-colored background.

A trail of blood.

She was running again before she even fully processed what she'd seen. She had to follow the thick, sticky, violet-tinged trail the same way Dorothy had to follow the yellow-brick road. Even more so, because she had no Ruby Slippers, no "There's No Place Like Home", nothing but the hope that she wouldn't find another nightmare at the end of her "road".

She passed a rock...

Turned...

And almost screamed out loud.

He'd reached the bottom safely. He'd reached the bottom, and whoever had caused all this had made him pay dearly for it.

A raspy, sob-like gasp tore itself from her throat as she rushed to the side of her prone, broken, lifeless friend.

Once again, she was alone. She'd been _left alone._

_"No." _She whispered, searching wildly for a pulse even as she stared into the youths dull, glazed, obviously lifeless eyes. _"I didn't mean like this. Not like this."_

_"Of course, that's just like you, Terra." _She heard the snake say, suddenly noticing him leaning against the rock in front of her. _"Always saying things you don't mean."_ Her eyes narrowed, zeroing in on the dark, wet blotches on his black clothing, especially his gloves.

She would have pinned him down and strangled the demon right then and there if he hadn't dissolved into thin air, her stormy surroundings shifting back into the gray-painted, gray-furnished room she had started in, leaving her burrowing into the cold, gray sheets, trying to erase the images ingrained into her mind.

_"No. No, no, no, no, no, no-" _

"No, no, no, no, no." She whimpered before her eyes shot open, bringing her back into the waking world.

But the pure white, sanitized, deserted hospital room, bathed in grays upon grays upon more grays by the moonlight, seemed to her like a waking nightmare, closing in on her as she huddled beneath the cold, white -gray- sheets (she hated sheets. They had none of the comfort of a nice, thick, cozy blanket.), screaming desperately in her mind for someone to _please, help me. I'm scared. _Then-

"Terra?" Sweet liberation!

She lunged toward the owner of the voice that had broken into her waking nightmare, gratefully enfolding herself in the other teen's warmth.

She felt the youth's arms wrap around her immediately, as if he wasn't at all surprised by her actions.

The arms shifted, slowly lifting her up before pausing, silently asking her permission. She nodded, face buried in his shoulder, and he finished the motion, gently settling her into his arms, bridal style again, and slowly moved her away from the shadowy, gray cloaked room.

She hated gray, hated it's cold, unfeeling lack of color, hated it's indecisiveness, always being right between black and white, never one or the other, and _especially_ hated how, during her apprenticeship, it was the only color she ever saw. Gray rooms, gray clothes, gray stones (for training), gray-tinged vision after each training session, both those with and without her powers, gray uniform, gray fog and buildings in the conquered Jump City, turning it into just another one of the grimy, filthy kind of cities that she hated, and her master's gray, unforgiving eye, always finding another fault to correct, another mistake to punish, another thing that made her _just not good enough_.

There was nothing cold or unfeeling about the way Garth cradled her, quietly expelling her residual fear. There was nothing indecisive about the way he walked, holding her, hesitating for only a moment before purposefully heading the way he decided to take her. There was nothing about him that she had seen during her apprenticeship, not even a hint of grime or filth. And there was nothing about his gentle, sharply defined, white on black eyes that wasn't forgiving, nothing that said she had to be perfect, that said she couldn't make mistakes, that she wasn't good enough. To see herself reflected in his eyes was to be silently told that she was the _best person on earth_.

When Garth reached his destination, Terra was in a haze of sweet contentment, only rousing herself from it long enough to protest softly as he started to pull away after he set her down. She didn't want him to go. He froze, for once at a loss for words.

"You don't mind if I..."

She shook her head, signaling her permission, inching over to make room for him as he settled next to her.

She could practically _hear_ him blushing.

Smiling slightly, she stilled her body as much as she could, hoping it would dispel the awkwardness that inevitably came with their position.

"How did you know?" She murmured, reluctantly breaking the silence.

"How did I know what?"

She shifted slightly, moving into a less awkward position.

"That I needed help... What to do to help me... Everything."

"I'm not sure about the second one," He answered. "but as for the first one, I was sleeping outside the door."

Terra smiled, even though she would have been creeped out if it was anyone else.

Yes, she decided. There was nothing about this youth (he was a youth because Beast Boy was a boy, Slade was a man, and Garth was right between them) that was even the least bit gray.

**A/N: NOTHING HAPPENED. NEITHER OF THEM WANTED ANYTHING TO HAPPEN. END OF STORY. Okay, moving on. I may have rambled a little bit, and I hope I didn't make the dream too bad... Nope. It's fine. I'm just being paranoid. But anyway, Rose is fine, in case you guys were wondering. And I don't know why I made a Wizard of Oz reference in Terra's dream. Uh, it's 'cause dreams are weird like that. Yeah. Well, this should be uploaded **_**just**_** in time to not be too late. (ow, now I have a headache. Great.)**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: I don't know if this is normal for authors, but every time I read a kind review, or I find out that someone favorited or is following my fic, I get these happy little jitters that either gives me a massive happy high that transforms into energy that I use to continue writing, or I get this warm, cozy feeling that automatically drops me in the zone I'm in when I write my best work. I've never really written a story before, and posting my first one on here makes me less worried that people are just telling me it's great because they don't want to hurt my feelings.**

**Another big thank you to Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06, as well. I've started relying on your reviews to gauge the quality of each chapter (I'm so much of a perfectionist, I can no longer trust my own judgment), and I'm happy that someone has noticed and mentioned my grammar, as it is one of the three things in my writing that I pride myself on. I'm also really happy that my spelling is okay, because without the power of the almighty spell-check, my spelling would be atrocious.**

***giggle* Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06 thinks my author's notes are funny. :) And I didn't have to mooch any jokes off my sister to write them. Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06, I dub you my new best friend. Everyone, please enjoy this new chapter while I go romp and frolic in a field of flowers.**

**Disclaimer: Look at the A/N. Does it say I give a darn who owns the Teen Titans as long as they let me write about 'em? Yeah, didn't think so. **

**I also don't own the nicknames Speedy uses for Bumblebee and Aqualad in this chapter.**

For the first time in years, Terra woke up feeling refreshed.

And then she gasped for air for a full half-minute before she realized she wasn't drowning. But, when one considers her surroundings at the time, it was a perfectly understandable mistake.

Out of the four walls of the room she was in, three were glass, stopping the crystal water on the other side from flooding in. The walls next to and facing the bed were windows, while the wall behind the bed was a wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling uninhabited fish tank. The fourth wall, with the door, was painted a soft blue, a shade darker than the sea-green carpet, and bordered on the top and bottom by dark purple wallpaper printed with a simple, subtle, vaguely Greek design. A bookshelf stood against the same wall as the door, the top two-thirds overflowing with books, pictures, and an odd jumble of knickknacks, and the other one-third consisting of three levels of drawers: four square ones at the top, two rectangular ones below, and a single, wide, shallow one at the bottom. On the other side of the room, a desk sat in the corner opposite the bed, both facing the same direction. The final pieces of furniture in the room were a sofa set against the same wall as the bed, near the shelf, a small side table, and a window seat built into the back wall, running from the corner to the foot of the bed, with slanted, pillow-like armrests and cushions of the same muted purple color as the sofa. All the furniture, including the bed frame and the cupboard-lined lower part of the window seat, was made of the same blue-green material that could only be described as a type of grainless wood, with a clear varnish seemingly made by cross-breeding scratch-resistant glass with a soap-bubble. Oh, did I mention the wall wasn't the only part of the room that imitated the windows? The ceiling was a fish tank, too. That's right, the _freaking ceiling_.

This, coupled with the rippling light from the windows and the overall medium blue/green/purple color scheme, gave the impression that the room was underwater, rather than simply below sea-level.

Obviously, you don't need to be a brain surgeon to figure out where she was.

*linebreak*

When Garth woke up, he was confused for a moment as to where he was and why he was there. Then he felt the person next to him shift slightly, and his unique purple blush began spreading itself across not only his face, but also his ears, neck, and possibly his entire body, deepening when he remembered exactly _where_ they were.

_"What on EARTH was I thinking when I brought her HERE, out of all the rooms in the tower?"_

"You awake?" He heard his temporary bed-mate say.

"Uh-huh."

Terra sat up half-way, eliciting a sloshing sound from the water-bed's mattress as it rocked gently beneath its inhabitants.

"Is this your room?"

He grinned, calmed somewhat by Terra's apparent lack of awkwardness.

"How'd you guess?" He joked.

"Well, aside from the fact that when I woke up, I almost died before I realized the water wasn't inside the room..." She giggled back, lying back down and snuggling beneath the silky, midnight blue blankets. **(A/n: **_**Blankets.**_** Not sheets. **_**Blankets.**_**)**

Garth glanced around the room and nodded solemnly.

"That might have something to do with it."

"Yep." She answered, turning her head towards the window.

"Nice view of the ocean, though." The blond observed, gazing at the other world on the other side of the glass.

"Best there is outside of Atlantis."

"Really?"

He nodded and shrugged.

"As far as I know."

Terra wasn't even going to try to visualize what an ocean view from Atlantis looked like. She'd traveled enough to know that this was just one of those things you couldn't imagine.

Instead, she turned her attention to the room's interior.

"I've never seen furniture like yours before. Where did you find it?"

"I didn't." He admitted ruefully. "I got it as an extremely over-expensive housewarming gift from Orin and Mera."

"Who-and-who-now?"

"My adoptive parents."

"Oh."

Garth wondered why, during his first early morning on the surface that ever felt this _right_, he had that weird feeling people get when they felt like something bad was going to happen.

"Hey, Fishstick." Garth stiffened.

Yep. That would be why.

"It's like an hour after you usually get up in the morning and Bumbleb*tch said..." Speedy trailed off as the door slid open, then promptly had to stifle a laugh. "Am I interrupting?"

Speedy was escorted out of the room by a barrage of pillows.

*linebreak*

By the time breakfast was over, Terra was satisfied that the team was convinced of two things: she was sleeping in Garth's room the way a scared little kid would sleep in their parent's room (as worded by Speedy), and she wasn't above attacking Speedy with a heavy marble rolling-pin (an attack he eagerly reciprocated with the biggest skillet he had on hand).

Now, however, she was planning on doing something a bit more calming than having an improv sparring match with a fellow teenager.

She was going to sketch her next sculpture.

Who knew? Maybe the sketch would end up being one of the ones she turned into a drawing after the sculpture was done.

_"Now,"_ She thought as she walked down the sidewalk-sized beach, sketchbook and camera (for photo references) in hand.

_"if only I could find something to ske..." _Her train of thought completely derailed as her eyes alighted on a scene that one would normally never see outside of an illustration for some ancient, glowingly written epic.

Slowly, almost reverently, she lifted the camera and took a picture, not taking the risk that her unknowing models would move before she finished the rough sketch, which was _most definitely _going to end up as a drawing once she had finished the work she had planned on.

_"Target acquired." _

*linebreak*

_"Someone is watching us."_

Garth stiffened for the second time in about two hours, before relaxing again, turning his wistful gaze back homewards and sighing in resignation.

_"Speedy with his fishing pole aimed for my shirt?"_

_"No. She is female. She does not look like the winged one either."_

_"Is she one of the male-crazed females?"_He asked, panicking slightly, using the dolphin term for "crazed fangirls".

_"No. She is sitting calmly, making no attempt to either hide or draw attention to herself, and her eyes lack the trademark glint of greed and lust."_

_"If you have any sympathy in your heart, you will never use the word "lust" or anything associated with that word to describe one of __**those **__things again."_

The dolphin glanced at him, amused.

_"Well, after the last one-"_

_"__**Please**__ just tell me what she looks like."_

_"Her skin is the kind surface-worlders call "Caucasian", and her eyes and hair appear to be similar in color to those of your father and younger brother."_

_"Terra?"_He thought in surprise, starting to turn around.

"Please don't move yet. I just have a little bit more to go before I can start using the photo reference."

_"Photo reference?" _He glanced suspiciously at his marine companion.

_"How long was she here before you told me?"_

The dolphin smiled, or at least did something close to a smile.

_"About half an hour."_

_"Have I ever told you how much I hate your sense of humor?"_

_"Yes, yes you have." _

**A/N: Food? Sleep? What kind of lazy bum still has time for stuff like that? The scary part of that sentence is I was only half kidding. I have had problems falling asleep for as long as I can remember (My self-imposed bedtime is 2 AM), and no one can tell that I chose reading, writing, and letting my glutton of a muse pig out every night in favor of lying in bed, wasting my time waiting to get sleepy (Don't tell my mom though, she still thinks I only stay up past midnight on New Year's Eve). Did I mention that I don't drink coffee (otherwise known as bitterness in a cup) to accomplish this? And as for food, dinnertime in my house is two-and-a-half hours longer than it needs to be. So yes, I have better things to do with my time than eat and sleep.**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: I had a big long thing I wanted to put here, but I'm too tired. All I have to say is this: anything in this chapter that is Atlantean-related, excluding the stuff about Greece, I probably made up, because the internet said mi'ta'lik about Atlantis in any way, shape, or form that would help me. (If you remember what mi'ta'lik means, then you have a very good memory) **

**Disclaimer: If I owned Teen Titans, I would not still be in high school, now would I?**

_"Can I leave __**now**__?"_ Garth smirked at the plaintive note in the animal's thoughts.

_"Is she done?"_

_"... No."_

_"Then no."_ The dolphin gave him a baleful look.__

_"Did I ever tell you that I hate your sense of humor?" _

_"Not before me."_ Garth answered cheerfully, before Terra spoke up from behind.

"It's okay if you want to leave now, Prr'en. I've finished the part of the drawing with you in it."

Prr'en threw a triumphant look back at Garth as he dived away. Garth gave a half-hearted, joking glare back, not really minding that his flippered friend had allowed to leave before him.

"Thanks for convincing him to stay long enough for me to finish some of the details, Garth."

"The fact that you treated him like another person instead of an object helped some." He replied, smiling.

"Still, thanks. And thanks for sticking around too."

"It's nothing." He said before posing the question that had been running through his mind. "What made you want to draw me and Prr'en, anyway?"

"I was looking for something I could sketch for my next sculpture, and not only did I find the perfect subject for it, it was in a scene that made it look like a professional, pre-planned pose for a painting. I would've had to be an idiot to pass up two posing models, one of them wearing what could have been a costume custom-made for the picture, complete with both a real, fully natural background and an underlying message. If I knew how to paint, I could really do it justice, but I'll just have to do the best I can with my colored pencils."

Garth's eyes darted down to his clothing in slight surprise.

"Two things, one a comment and one a question. One: I'm wearing what Atlanteans consider casual clothing, like you surface-worlder's T-shirts and jeans. Two: underlying message?"

Terra looked up, studying his outfit thoroughly: sea green leggings, a Greek-looking, dark blue, green-trimmed tunic, and bare feet.

"Well, I guess those tights _might_ be able to pass off as kind of normal up here, but that shirt of yours has been out of fashion at least since the fall of Ancient Greece."

"I guess that's not surprising, since Atlantis was part of Ancient Greece before it sank."

Terra's eyebrows shot up.

"Wait, does that mean your Greek?"

"I guess, if you look at it that way. Now, about that "underlying message" you were talking about?"

Terra smiled.

"It's kind of hard to explain. If I was an art critic, I might be able to, but for now, it would probably be less confusing to just wait to look at the drawing itself. Darn." She said, scowling at the paper before picking up her eraser. "Good thing drawing you, Prr'en, and that big rock your sitting on is easier than I expected, 'cause drawing the sea and the sky around you is a _lot _harder than I thought it would be, especially since I've never drawn the sea or a cloudy sky before, let alone during a storm."

Garth glanced at the sky.

"Storm? there's no storm."

"Yes there is, compared to the rest of the country."

"Oh," He said, surveying his surroundings before nodding. "in that case, yes, there is a storm."

She nodded back, eyes roaming over her model, carefully noting down each seemingly unimportant detail on his figure as she mentally translated them into pencil marks.

_"I don't remember it being this easy to draw something before. The last time I tried this-" _She stopped._ "... The last time I tried this was before I met Slade."_ She shrugged and returned her attention to the half-finished black-and-white drawing.

_"Well, that explains why this is so much faster and easier to do."_ She thought._ "Those "observation exercises" Slade made me do to make me a better spy actually have an honest use." _She thought with satisfaction as she finished shading a fold in Garth's tunic.

She looked back up at her picture's subject, and found herself distracted from her drawing by the very scene she had decided to immortalize in her sketchbook.

Garth's position on the gray-black rock had remained unchanged, but his expression hadn't, shifting from a quiet, content smile back to the wistful, longing, homesick visage he'd had when she first saw him here, staring out to sea as if searching the water for his far-away aquatic home. His "posed" profile followed the direction of his gaze, the position of his lower body resembling an angled version of the "warrior" yoga pose, with his upper body supported on his arms, braced against the large stone's flat top. His left leg was bent, foot placed on a shelf of stone on the rock's side, near the top, his knee level with his chest, as his right leg stretched out and down behind him, both limbs pushing against the rock to raise himself higher into the wind. Though his position was similar to that of Disney's fish-themed princess **(A/N: *ITIP denies that comparison's existence*)**, the emotions expressed by each individual were undeniably different. While she had longed for the land, his soul ached for the sea, even though he was all but within the waves, the dark, raging, free-form blue shapes stretching in his direction like a magnet, transforming the water's surface into a field of outstretched, eager arms, urging him to return to their embrace. And, though Prr'en had left, the sleek image of his slender, silvery head and neck poking up from the sea a foot away from the rock, nose pointed to his friend, burned clearly in Terra's mind, as if his presence symbolized the creatures of the sea trying to persuade their comrade to abandon the surface and come home.

And he resisted, his inner turmoil projected into the world of tangibility in the form of the dark, boiling, lightning infused clouds above him as he clung determinedly to the water-bound rock, even as his traitorous upper body reached for sea. Behind him, the sharp-looking, gravelly sand and dark, filthy shapes of rust-encrusted modern-day pollution that made up the bit of beach included in the drawing contrasted deeply with the clean, dancing waves and the hints of nature and times long past (Garth's clothing style and Prr'en's presence), making the difference between the grey-cloaked, pollution-enslaved city and the pure, foam-flecked, breathtakingly wild ocean painfully obvious. His longing to return home was clear on his face, making him seem vulnerable, almost helpless. The pain in his face, reflected by the subtle flashes of lightning burning in the clouds overhead, was enough to make even the most selfish person want nothing more than to rid him of his heartache. Yet, despite his agonizing longing, a sort of regal strength and pride lurked in his face and form as well, echoed by the dim, cloud-veiled sunlight in the sky above. His expression was that of a youth who, by the cruel whim of fate, had been forced to undertake a man's errand, and would not allow himself to return home before it was done. His loyalty and determination outweighed his desperate desire to leave this strange, filth-darkened, foreign land and return home.

Even if you were looking at it in the context of professional art, it was amazing. The picture had a vocal point in the form of Garth and his dolphin friend. The meaning was perfectly clear without any changes. The dark blue, turbulent, endless waves, the presence of a free, healthy, living creature, and the touches of Ancient Greek culture both blended seamlessly and contrasted perfectly in every way with the drabness, lifelessness, and lack of motion on the triangular scrap of polluted, grayish-tan beach and it's many indications of the modern century's worst contributions. The composition and shape placement was already flawlessly balanced. The natural framing, the pointing dolphin and waves, and the fact that it had was the only living things and truly vibrant colors in the entire picture emphasized the vocal point perfectly. The scene was five in one: a sculptor's reference picture, an inspirational depiction of a hero, an illustration for a yet to be written story, a study of opposites, and, if looked at in the right way, an urging to protect nature while it was still possible.

It was also a good excuse to stare at Aqualad for hours on end.

It was at about this moment that Terra's emotions and hormones called a truce so they could make her aware of the fact that she had a crush on the aquatic hero she had been staring at dreamily for the past ten minutes.

_"No." _she told her emotions/hormones as she turned her attention back to the nearly finished section of the drawing. _"I am a partially amnesic, fresh-back-from-the-dead ex-Titan-turned-traitor-turned-hero-turned-statue-turned-human who is in hiding with two stalkers, one of them a green super hero and the other a super-villain that I once killed and who probably wants to kill me and everyone I'm close to, and who is quite possibly emotionally unstable. Not only would having a crush on him be selfish and make him an even bigger target, there is no reason why someone like him would be interested in a girl like me, especially since the first and last time someone trusted me, I __**betrayed**__ them and helped __**Slade**__ try to __**kill **__them, __**dumped **__my __**very first boyfriend**__**ever**__ in the __**worst**__ possible way, on the __**first date**__ no less, and later took over an __**entire city**__ after trying to __**kill**__ said boyfriend. This is NOT the time for a crush. And I don't have one."_

*linebreak*

_"I told you he was here."_ Prr'en thought back to his follower._ And see? I was right."_

_"So you were."_ Orin replied, glancing between the two teenagers with a slight smile. _"Perhaps reminding him of his promise to visit Atlantis today can wait."_

"Oh for the love of Neptune." Garth's voice broke into their conversation, causing them to raise their eyebrows and smile slightly in amusement at his emotionally scarred and deeply disturbed expression.

_"I think he noticed the "artwork" that other group of teenagers was making behind them."_ Prr'en said.

_"Yes, I think he did." _Orin answered, grinning at the atrociously spelled words spray-painted in bright neon colors on the cliff-wall behind Garth and Terra: _**"Bummbel Be Andd Akwalad 4 Eva!"**_

**A/N: Well, that last sentence wasn't random or the most evil piece of writing known to man at all. Excuse me while I go find and kill the immature children who wrote those awful words. **

**And yes, that random person at the end was Aquaman, otherwise known in this fic as AL's adoptive father who I hope will have a somewhat prominent role in this story. I would write more, and improve the last part of this chapter, but I have been working on this chapter for the past **_**nine hours**_**, and I am quite understandably sick of looking at this computer screen. See you next time. **


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Ah crud. Why am I so stupid? Why didn't I wait until I got a chapter of this done and posted before I tried to re-upload that darn humor fic that's apparently a "list"? Is the world **_**trying**_** to keep me from uploading stuff on here? Why am I complaining about something that saved me from uploading something I would've hated later, since nothing in this chapter was anywhere near my first ideas? This is the best thing that ever happened to me! :) **

**Also, I know I should have restrained myself but I just couldn't. I'm going to be including some song bits from Les Miserables (pronounced "le miseral"). It inspired so much of this story emotion-wise that not including it in some way would have practically been copywrite infringement. You don't have to go and watch it to understand the story, but finding and listening to the song "I Dreamed A Dream" from it for this chapter would clarify the reason I wrote Terra's dream the way I did. I won't be including whole songs here, just some references and the occasional quote, one verse at the most. Since certain songs/quotes added so much "omf" to it emotionally, in my opinion, I thought it was a good compromise.**

**Can anyone else imagine someone (coughcough Argent) showing this to Terra, and Terra eventually connecting emotionally with some of the songs?**

**... I think it makes sense.**

**Disclaimer: I own the Teen Titans: False.**

**I own Les Miserables: False.**

**I would have enough money to buy the Titans if I owned Les Miserables: True.**

When Terra and Aqualad had returned to the tower after removed the spray-painted terror from the face of the cliff, Terra escaped to her room as soon as she could without insulting him.

_"Okay, Terra," _She told herself. _"you do not have a crush. It was just an effect of... drawing too long. You were so focused on him for so long that... Yeah. Okay, really need distraction right now."_

She grabbed her IPod (a gift from Argent) and selected something randomly.

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by-"

Terra looked at the little contraption in slight surprise.

_"Oh, right. That was the last thing I was listening to."_ She thought as Fantine's voice drifted into her ears, somehow lulling her to sleep.

And she dreamed. She dreamed of her own "time gone by", and a certain green boy from that time. The time when her only guilt was in her powers, a time when she was innocent, naïve, and carefree, compared to now. A time, a short time, when her past felt so far behind her, she thought she had finally outrun it, and was now allowed to start _living_. Then a tiger forced its way into her dream, followed by another. The first one was black, striped with gray on the body and orange on the face. The second one was green. They were chasing each other, running in circles around her so fast their shapes blurred into a continues line, hemming her in. The green tiger suddenly turned and pounced on the black tiger, paws swiping down for a killing stroke.

The black cat shattered, a glass illusion, the real creature appearing several feet away. The green tiger pounced again, and once again, the black one shattered, another one appearing behind him.

Pounce. Shatter. Pounce. Shatter. Pounce. Shatter.

No matter how hard it tried, it could never hit the real one.

Then, the black one (the real one) pounced down from a perch somewhere above them, landing right between her and green, challenging it smugly.

The green left.

The dream switched to visions of her and Beast Boy. Depictions of events, wonderful events, but ones that would never happen, with Beast Boy or anyone else.

Her first real date.

Her first kiss.

Even a wedding.

But it was only a dream, and the images blew away like dead fall leaves. Leaving her hanging. Wishing they would come back.

But they didn't.

_"Terra? Terra, wake up."_

She wanted to. She really wanted to. But she didn't know how.

"Terra?"

"HOLY HELL!" Obviously, she hadn't expected him to pop into her dream as if on cue. "How did you get in here?!"

He held out his hand with a slight smile.

"Come back to the waking world with me and I'll tell you."

"Oh no. Tell me, tell me_ now_."

He sighed.

"Fine."

A flood of feelings washed over her, telling her what she wanted.

Their powers. Raven had found out , accidentally, that they stemmed from the same "energy" or something. His telepathy. The two combined together meant that he could communicate just as well with her mentally as he could with a fish.

Then sleep was gone, replaced by the image of Garth's face, eyes staring into her own.

Sadly, it was also accompanied by the blinking lights and aggravating sound of the alarm. Perfect frickin' timing.

*linebreak*

"Can we switch that alarm to something that's not so _freakin' annoying_?" Speedy growled as he ran into the room.

"If we did, then we would never be able to get you to come." Aqualad deadpanned back.

"Enough, guys." Bumblebee said, interrupting the boy's bickering as her fingers tapped on the computer keys, bringing up a picture of what looked like some kind of mine.

"Isn't that the Steel City steel mine?" Terra couldn't help snorting in amusement at the mine's name.

Bumblebee smirked at her.

"Yes, Speedy, it is."

"Why would someone want to attack a steel mine?" Aqualad asked, frowning as he approached the computer screen.

"Robots, maybe?"

"Speedy, this is not the time for-"

"I'm serious. Look." He said, pointing at the screen.

The lighting in the scene the computer showed wasn't the best, but it was quite easy to see that the "criminals" that were attacking the steel mine were definitely not human. The metallic glint the team could see whenever one of the black forms did pass into lighted areas and the fact that one of them had _gotten their hand crushed _under the steel beam it was trying to pick up, and could still continue working completely unfazed proved that.

"Wow, Speedy, you actually noticed something useful for a change. Congratulations." Bee said.

Aqualad glanced at Terra.

"You want to come with?" He asked. "There's no one there who would be able to see you, and it would be a good chance to get used to using your powers again."

"That doesn't sound like a half-bad idea." Bumblebee stated thoughtfully, looking at the screen and estimating the number of robots at the mine. "This team may be able to hold its own against most of the goons the original Titans deal with, but M & M are technically one person power-wise, so we really only have four members, which makes it harder for us to deal with groups that size. An extra person would be a big help."

Terra thought for a moment, intentionally ignoring the frantic negative gesturing Speedy was making from behind Bee.

"Fine."

She was doubly gratified by Speedy's groan of absolute agony.

*linebreak*

"If you guys were so bored that you decided to rob someplace in a city protected by a team of superheroes, it might have been smarter to pick someplace worth robbing."

The robots looked up as the voice of the Titans East leader entered their mechanical ears. An action that caused the entire team to either freeze, go limp, or some combination of both, as well as practically making Terra pass out.

"... Oh crap." Speedy stated as he stared at row upon row upon row of Sladebots. **(A/N: Yep. Slade again. Cliché, I know. Just bare with me.)**

"Well, no sense in disappointing the man." Bumblebee mused before shouting the Titan's battle cry. "Titans, GO!"

*I am too lazy to write a fight scene right now 'cause it's midnight and I'm planning on going back over and improving this fic as soon as I post the last chapter, so we can just skip to the important part for now.*

Terra's eyes scanned the battleground.

Speedy's bow had been broken, as had the first two of the three collapsible spare bows he had.

Bumblebee and Aqualad were trying to get the twins back together after they had been thrown to different sides of the above-ground part of the mine. At the moment, they weren't doing too well. However, a quick wave of her hand and a pair of stone bowls soon solved that problem.

" ¡gracias Terra"!

"No problem." Her eyes returned to the battlefield, looking for somewhere else she could help...

And immediately zeroed in on the one person she had thought she would be free of for at least a few more days.

_"Payback time."_ was the only thing she was conscious of thinking as she ran after the escaping villain.

"Terra, wait!"

_"Not needed, buddy." _She replied mentally. _"He may have beaten me last night, but we're on __**my **__turf now."_

She chased the orange and black blur into the mine. Before, running into a mine might have been something that Slade _could_ have been able to pull off.

Now, with control over her powers no longer an issue, Slade's plan, whatever it was, was turning out to be nothing more than a very. Big. Mistake.

*linebreak*

"WHERE THE HELL IS THE OFF BUTTON FOR THESE THINGS?!"

"Shut your trap Speedy!" Bumblebee shouted back at him. "Some people are trying to concentrate on NOT GETTING KILLED right now!"

On the other side of the mine, Mas and Menos piped up.

"Donde es Aqualad?"

"What did they say?"

"They said you need Spanish lessons, Bow Boy." Bee answered, eyes now scanning the battlefield. "They also asked where Goldfish is."

"He ran into the mine after Slade and Terra."

"WHAT?!"

*linebreak*

Slade ran into a dead end.

Terra stopped directly behind him, hands glowing and a small, predatory grin on her face.

He was trapped. Surrounded on all sides by miles of rock, every atom of which was at her beck and call.

"Time to finish what I started three years ago in the cave."

"On the contrary, my dear girl." He said, pulling another _darn _trigger to God knows _what_ out of a hidden pocket in his suit.

"It's time to finish what _I _started."

**A/N: Slade really likes his toys, doesn't he? And no, the trigger is not to a bomb. Don't expect to wait on a cliff-hanger for very long. I've already got the next chapter all planned out, and I'll probably upload it today or early tomorrow. See ya then. :)**


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: In this A/N, I would like to acknowledge a few of the things that let this FanFic idea become a reality, as well as a few things that influenced me to start thinking up such stories in the first place:**

**1. My sister, who introduced me to both the Teen Titans and YouTube about four years ago, one fateful day during summer vacation.**

**2. Some lovely person on Deviant Art who posted a link which brought me to this site (I was, and still am, a pathetic mess when it comes to the internet, and would never have found it on my own).**

**3. Just about every Aquerra writer I have encountered over the years, mostly back when this pairing intrigued me only because I thought the word "Aquerra" sounded pretty.**

**4. The "You Dummy"moment when I realized the Sign Up screen I had been using for two months to try to sign up for a FanFiction account was actually the Login screen (which, ladies and gentlemen, is _not_ the Sign Up screen, and therefore _not_ the place to go to sign up for an account).**

**And last yet the one with the treasure chest:**

**5. Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06, for being the person who unknowingly convinced me that this story should not move into the garbage to become the new roommate of my last seven attempts at writing a story.**

**Each of these people/event have a share in the success of this story. If you like it, then please take a moment to join me in saying "Thank you 1-5". If you don't like this story, then what are you doing here trying to crash our heartwarming moment? Bug off!**

**Disclaimer: *ITIP is sitting next to her mailbox***

**ITIP: "When is my owner's manual to the Teen Titans going to get here?"**

**ITIP's sister: "You do know that only owners can get owner's manuals, right?"**

**ITIP: "... Psh yeah, of course I do."**

_"You lost them!"_ Garth mentally screamed at himself as his eyes darted between the two forking mineshafts. _"How could you lose them?! You were __three feet__ behind them!"_

_"Garth."_ The part of his brain that still had a grip on reality said.

_"What?!"_

_"Remember this morning when you told her about how you can communicate with her mentally?"_

_"What does that have to do with anything?!"_

The still fully stable half of his brain took this opportunity to slap the freaking-out side of his brain upside the head.

_"Look for her with your mind, numbnut."_

_"... Oh. Right."_ He was about to take this advice when he heard a rumbling noise coming from the left fork.

_"Never mind. I found them."_ He thought as he darted into the left fork, either ignoring or not noticing the strangely ominous smell pervading the tunnel.

*linebreak*

The moment Slade pulled out the trigger, Terra practically brought the entire tunnel down on him. She had heard _quite_ enough about Slade and his triggers to know that she did _not_ want to know what this one did.

"Why so nervous, my dear girl?"

"What does that thing do?" She snapped back, the boulders around her still getting swept up in her rage.

"Calm yourself, dear child." He said, deliberately feeding her anger by using the patronizing term. "Your acting as if-"

Whatever she was acting like remained unknown since, at that particular moment, a rock came sailing at him out of nowhere, knocking the trigger out of his hand...

Sending it falling toward the ground...

Where it landed button-first...

Thus setting it off.

Wonderful.

"- As if the trigger was the threat."

A pair of stone hands shot up out of the ground in front of him, pinning him to the wall.

"You have five seconds to tell me what that just did."

"Why Terra," Slade said in mock surprise, "I thought you knew me well enough to guess that on your own."

He tossed a small, black ball at her feet, which turned out to be a small explosive.

In the few seconds her attention was distracted, he managed to slip out of her stone grip, delivering a kick that sent her flying into the back wall.

"Don't worry, Terra," Terra heard him say, his mocking voice curling out of the dusty cloud. "That trigger was only to make sure we won't be disturbed. This," he said, the silhouette of his hand moving to another button, this one on his wrist. "is what you should be afraid of."

The tunnel caved in on him just as the he pressed the button. Then, strangely, the stones release him.

_"Where did THAT come from?"_

"Now, Terra, I hope you didn't think I only had _one_ backup plan for incase you turned on me." She could practically hear him smirking. "For example: the emotion regulator that implanted itself into your body an hour or so after you first put on your suit. It was really quite a helpful addition, really, being able to have not only your body, but your _feelings_ under my direct control. A pity that your suit had disconnected it when it merged with your skin. It made things ever so much harder. So you can imagine my satisfaction when I found out your insect friend had removed the suit, giving me access to your thoughts again."

"You may have controlled what I did, but you _never __controlled _**_what I THOUGHT_**." She screamed, emphasizing the statement with a ten-ton boulder.

Which somehow missed Slade completely.

"Really, Terra? Then why do I still have access to your powers? Controlling someone's nerves system doesn't extend to controlling an ability to move stone with their _mind_. Why else would I have been so _very_ helpful as you learned to control your powers?"

"Of course," He continued, strolling over to the dead-end wall. "You don't have to take my word for it. A certain fish-scented admirer of yours was kind enough to volunteer to help you test it directly."

Terra's eyes widened.

"**_WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?!_**"

"I didn't do anything to him." He said, leaning down to pick something up before he showed her what it was: the trigger she had knocked out of his hand. "But if you wish to see what _you_ did..."

Slade pressed a button on the other end of the trigger, blasting a hole in the wall of the "dead-end".

Fire billowed out.

"You have five minutes to find him before he dies." He said, glancing down at her horrified face as the smoke curled around him, obscuring him from her sight. "Whether or not you help him, however, is entirely up to either one of us."

*linebreak*

Miraculously, Aqualad was conscious and unharmed when she found him, aside from the smoke inhalation.

Sadly, Slade had been telling the truth when he said that the choice to help him was up to either of them. Precious seconds ticked by as she stood there, battling Slade's influence as she tried to command herself to move.

_"No."_ She whispered as a nearby spear of stone inched closer as Slade slowly manipulated her powers, not wanting to take any chances on Garth's survival.

At this point, Garth was barely keeping himself awake, but somehow he managed to concentrate enough to use his telepathy.

_"Let me help."_

*linebreak*

Ten minutes later, Bumblebee was just about ready to kill something.

"Crap, crap, crap, crap-" She muttered under her breath, scanning the collapsed tunnel with her communicator for some kind of entrance (another fun addition Cyborg had made to the communicators).

Then it ran out of power.

"# %$&!" She shouted, whipping around and throwing it at the wall. "USLESS!"

"Uh, Bee?"

"WHAT?"

Speedy pointed to the pile of rocks.

Which promptly exploded all over the place, accompanied by several large tongues of flame.

"OH MY GOD!"

Two coughing figures were silhouetted against the dancing flames.

"We could use a hand here."

*linebreak*

Slade was _not_ happy. Two of his plans had failed, two nights in a row, and both had failed thanks to Slade underestimating his opponent.

Sure, it was far harder to use on a victim who knew it was there, anyway, so it's immediate removal by Bumblebee was not too bad of a loss. And the other costs weren't crippling, his carefully laid backup plans were too well thought out for that. What angered him was the fact that that particular level of backup plans had been reached in the first place.

All thanks to that _damn Atlantean_.

It didn't take a genius to figure out who "Garth" turned out to be, and Terra's mental activity chart quite clearly showed a small spike during the time he had given her to find the fish-boy. Small, but big enough to make all the difference against the regulator. It also matched the readings he had taken from fish whom, at the time, had been telepathically communicating with the afore-mentioned Atlantean.

And Atlanteans were one of the few things in the world that Slade knew next to nothing about, thanks to the race's general seclusion. He knew the bare facts about them, of course, but he was never happy with only knowing what was common knowledge. This, among other things, was one of the reasons why he tried to work with members of this marine race as little as possible.

But now, he would have to go against an unfamiliar opponent, one he knew almost nothing about, physically or mentally.

_"... Unless..."_

**A/N: I'm pretty sure this is the shortest chapter yet, and it's not as good as I would like it, but I'm brain-dead from exhaustion, and I promised you guys a chapter today, and _by God_, you're getting one.**

**On a side note: I. Hated. Writing. This. Chapter. So. Confusing. *dies from exhaustion***


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Bleh... I just got through that time of year. It's inescapable, even at**_** my**_** school, which is so deeply in the middle of nowhere that its unofficial nickname is "The Cornfield School".**

**It's the day after Homecoming weekend, everybody. And aside from the early dismissal last Friday and the health teacher's hilarious Mario costume (don't ask what Mario has to do with Homecoming), I really couldn't care less. **

**Now, for something I most definitely do care about: Answering the two most recent reviews (TWO! And from two different people, no less! Holy ego boost, Batman!) **

**First up, a recent guest reviewer, zaq. 1. Thank you very much, I most happily intend to do so. :) 2. I'm glad you like the way I used the dreams; I sincerely hope that you will not regret the wait. 3. Don't worry, I've just gotten over a very mild case of writers block, and am now at the aggravatingly complex and confusing part of the plot. Screwing up now would be disastrous, so you may rest assured that rushed writing will not happen again anytime soon. :) 4. Don't worry, the first of my Ten FanFiction Commandments is: "Thou shalt not drop off the face of the earth when thou still hasith an unfinished fic", so you can expect an update at least once a week! Just pray for Iris's continued health and a lack of writers block. :) **

**And once again, a big thank you to Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06, for another review that makes me giggle happily like a maniac. I read your review shortly after uploading chapter 13, and it really cheered me up. :)**

**Now, time to get to the story part before my ADD really kicks in.**

**Disclaimer: Iris, do we own the Teen Titans? ... What? Check their Wikipedia page? *does so* Ah crabapple. **

Though Aqualad and Terra appeared relatively unharmed, Bumblebee insisted that the two remain confined to the sick bay until their wellbeing could be apprised by a professional. This was where Terra was at the moment, accompanied by Speedy.

As dangerous as his presence there was, it was tempered by the fact that both were staring, jaws unhinged, at the hospital bed next to Terra's. Or, more accurately, at their whimpering Atlantean friend laying in the bed and the nurse sitting next to him.

The shocked silence in the room was suddenly broken by the sound of the afore-mentioned nurse slamming the needle she had been holding down on the metal table next to the bed, cursing loudly as the fish-boy started laughing uncontrollably.

"S-s-sor-r-r-ry." He stuttered through his chortling. "I-it t-t-tickles!"

At this, Speedy stood up from the chair situated between the two hospital bed-bound elementals and stomped out of the room shouting: "I hope you die from not being able to get a blood transfusion or something!"

"Are you sure he needs a blood test?" Terra asked the nurse.

"Yes." She answered as she picked up yet another one of the evilly glinting objects. "We have to make sure there was nothing in the smoke that could hurt him. And before you ask how we expect to find that out from a blood test, what's in the air, goes in the lungs, what goes in the lungs, goes in the blood, what goes in the blood has to be checked at a time like this."

Here, the now-desperate nurse started stabbing- yes, **stabbing**- the needle into Garth's arm. Or rather, _onto_ his arm, considering how much effect it was having.

"What-the-hell-is-your-skin-made-of?" The poor woman asked, punctuating each word with an ineffectual jab.

"The same stuff yours is." He answered with difficulty, trying not to laugh again. "But Atlanteans live at the bottom of the ocean. Our bones, skin, pretty much everything, have to be denser than human's to survive down there."

The nurse half-growled, half-groaned as the twelfth needle that hour was destroyed.

"You could try giving him a bloody nose." Terra suggested helpfully.

"What's this about giving someone a bloody nose?"

The three looked up at the sound of the new voice.

"Dr. Blaise." The nurse said, relieved. "Perfect timing. I'm having a little trouble with-"

"Giving Aqualad his blood test?" The other woman finished, smiling slightly.

"Yes." The nurse answered, waving her hand at about a dozen bent-beyond-repair needles sitting on the nearby table. "For some reason, none of the needles we brought seem to be strong enough to pierce his skin."

The doctor frowned in confusion.

"That's odd. I've been giving him immunization shots and blood tests for over two years, and the only problems I ever had was with keeping him still long enough to give him the shot. Did you... Oh." Her face cleared, and she gave Garth (who had begun to turn re- I mean purple) a look that was somewhere between mild exasperation and patient amusement.

"She was using the normal sanitizing alcohol, wasn't she?"

Garth nodded, and Terra could've sworn he looked slightly sheepish.

"Was there something else I was supposed to use?" The nurse asked.

"Yes Anna, but it's really no surprise that you didn't know, thanks to his-" She nodded in Garth's direction. "-slight phobia of needles." She walked to the table with the bent needles and picked up an inconspicuous-looking bottle.

"When we give any kind of shot to an Atlantean, we use this instead of the normal alcohol. It's mixed with a chemical that chemically reacts temporarily with their skin, softening it to the point where we can pierce it with a regular needle."

Anna stared at the little glass container for a full minute before Dr. Blaise offered to take Aqualad's blood test for her, an offer that was readily accepted.

"You humiliated her." She chided Garth gently after the poor nurse practically ran out of the room.

"She scared me." He shot back defensively. "She didn't know that Atlantean skin is too tough for a regular shot. That alone is enough to tell that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing."

"Garth," She sighed. "She was taking your blood test. A doctor or nurse doesn't need to be an expert at Atlantean biology to do _that_."

"I don't care. I hate needles as it is. I'm not going to let a totally clueless person turn me into a pincushion." He interrupted himself with a grunt of pain as the woman inserted the needle into his arm.

"Garth, really, your too old to be this scared by getting shots."

"It's not the shots themselves that scare me. If the normal pain from them was all I'd have to worry about, there'd be no problem. It's how _sharp_ the pain is. With skin like mine, I'm just not used to feeling pain so clearly." Garth suddenly noticed Terra staring at the thin, clear, flexible tube piping his blood into a small vial. "What?"

Terra blinked. "Why is your blood purple?"

"All Atlanteans have purple blood." Dr. Blaise said, answering for him. "It's one of the most complex and, in my opinion, fascinating biological differences between them and humans."

Garth sighed. "Here we go again." He muttered quietly to Terra.

"You see, when the city of Atlantis sank into the sea, the Atlantean race used a combination of magic and science to change their bodies so they could survive in deep-sea environments, acquiring many fish-like traits as a result. One of these was the inclusion of hemocyanin, an oxygen transport molecule found in mollusks and some arthropods that is similar in purpose to hemoglobin, in their blood. In cold environments with low oxygen pressure, at the bottom of the sea for example, hemocyanin is more efficient than hemoglobin at carrying oxygen through the blood stream. This kind of blood, found naturally, changes color between clear and blue, depending on whether or not it's oxygenated, though when found in Atlantean blood, it remains blue constantly. However, as Atlanteans don't always stay that deep in the water, they retained enough hemoglobin in their blood to efficiently transport oxygen through their bodies in warmer environments with higher oxygen pressure. These two kinds of blood, each containing different respiratory proteins, combine magically in Atlantean blood, resulting in its purple color." The doctor noticed Terra's blank stare when she finally paused for breath.

"... Long, long ago, far, far away, Atlanteans did some magic stuff that put useful fishy things in their bodies, like blue fishy blood. Blue fishy blood works better in cold places than red people blood. But it doesn't work well in warm places, so they kept some of their red people blood. Red and blue makes purple."

*linebreak*

Terra was having another Mist Dream. And it was her favorite setting, too.

_"Nice timing." _Terra thought._ "I was hoping I'd get a chance to test out my theory tonight."_

_"What theory?"_

_"Nice of you to drop by."_ She said, smiling at the newly arrived mist out of the corner of her eye. _"And it's just an idea I've been thinking about."_

_"About me?"_

Terra grinned.

_"Yep, very much about you..."_ She paused. _"Garth."_

She sensed more than saw the figure inside the cloud stiffen up, then droop back down as it let the mist scatter, revealing a very humiliated Atlantean.

_"What gave me away?"_

_"Your voice."_ She answered.

_"Figures." _He said, blushing deeper.

_"Hey, don't feel too bad, I'm actually kind of glad it was you."_

He perked up at this.

_"Really? You mean you-"_

"NARWHALS, NARWHALS, SWIMMIN' IN THE OCEAN! CAUSIN' A COMMOTION, 'CAUSE THEY ARE SO AWESOME!"

Terra jerked awake as her "dream buddy" was rudely awakened by the song blasting into his room through the intercom.

"SPEEDY!"

**A/N: Speedy, the moment killer. :) Another short chapter that I'm not entirely satisfied with, and it's late, but like I said, I just got over writers block. The next chapter will be better, I promise.**

***looks back at the thing about blood* Hmmm... Yeah, I really have to cut down on my Wikipedia intake. ... No I don't have a life, why do you ask?**


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: I forgot to mention this last chapter, but remember that song Speedy blasted into AL's room? It's a real song. Type in "narwhals" into the YouTube search bar, and it's the first thing that comes up. **

**I would have had this chapter up earlier, but the first day I started it, I was on a Disney high, so that caused me to pretty much butcher it, then the next day, I couldn't make my mind focus. I was acting like a five-year-old, female Beast Boy. Not a good thing when I have to focus on something. And then school started so... Yeah. Sorry.**

**And, to top it off, we had to run a **_**mile and a half**_** in gym today. And I Have to wake up half an hour earlier tomorrow. Guhhhh. Please enjoy the chapter while I take a nap. *introduces face to keyboard***

**Disclaimer: I don't even own a Teen Titans DVD. I watch them on YouTube.**

Garth had no idea how it happened. One minute he was chasing down Speedy, intent on murdering him, and the next thing he knew, he was sitting in the other boy's room, getting advice on girls from the _last_ person he should trust with a matter like this. He also couldn't remember when he had started _taking notes_.

"- and girls like guys who know how to cook."

"Who are you and what have you done with Speedy?" Aqualad asked as he scribbled in the notebook he didn't remember grabbing. "The real Speedy can't even flirt without earning a slap in the face."

"Hey, I'm not saying I have all the stuff on this list, I'm just saying it's the stuff a lot of girls look for."

"You, admitting that you aren't the physical embodiment of perfection? Once again, who are you and what have you done with Speedy?"

"Hey, come on. This affects me too."

Aqualad blinked, looking up from the notebook to make sure that he was really talking to Speedy and not a "guest" who had escaped from the funny farm.

"... In what way could this _possibly _affect you?"

"You never liked any of the girls you met."

"So?"

"You do know that people, both Titans and civilians, were starting to think you might be gay, right?"

Garth was now feeling a distinct need to get out of the archer's room.

"... Disturbing, but not really explaining why this affects you."

"Well, if you don't get a girlfriend soon, it's only a matter of time until they start thinking you and I are-"

"Okay, too much explaining! Bye!"

"Remember!" Speedy shouted after him as he practically _ran_ out of the room. "Both our lives depend on this!"

"That's enough, Roy!" Garth said loudly, trying to tune out his teammate's voice.

He started to run for the safety of his room, but stopped and turned back to Speedy's door.

"This night never happened."

The other boy gave him a thumbs up.

"Gotcha."

_Then_ Garth ran out of the room.

*linebreak*

Terra walked into the main room the next morning to see an exhausted Bumblebee pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"Either you didn't sleep last night even with your earplugs, or your just not a morning person." Terra said, grinning.

"What?" Bee asked loudly.

Terra blinked, then pointed to Bee, then to her ears, and mimed taking something out of them.

"Oh, right." Bee pulled out her earplugs and dropped them into the pocket of the blue bathrobe she wore over her PJs (which, contrary to popular belief, did _not_ perfectly match her uniform color-wise).

"Sleep well?" She yawned.

"Surprisingly, yes, considering the circumstances. Thanks for giving me that extra pair of earplugs, by the way."

"No problem." Bee answered, grinning. "You'll need them as long as Speedy decides to be his idiot self."

Terra grinned back.

"So, did you get any sleep last night?"

"About as much as usual. I'm just not a morning person. I can't even trust myself to put my clothes on right until after I've had at least one cup of coffee."

Terra laughed as she joined the other girl at the table. Then she frowned and sniffed the air around her coffee mug.

"Whew! What do you put in your coffee?!"

Bee gave a short, tired laugh.

"Don't worry. This is just my first cup of the day. And, in the unforgettable words of a very wise person whom I forgot the name of, a person's first cup of the morning should be black as night, hot as hell, and strong as love. All subsequent cups should be all of the above with extra cream."

The girls shared a laugh at this as the door opened to admit the blatantly energetic twins, followed by the two older boys of the team, one with an expression that was quite simply ticked-off royal, and the other with an identical expression, plus a black eye and bruised jaw.

"Well," Bumblebee chirped cheerfully. "looks like someone got up on the wrong side of the intercom this morning."

"Nope." Aqualad said, glaring sideways at the bruise-adorned Speedy. "That was last night. About three AM."

"Three eighteen AM."

"Well aren't we being all precise and proper today."

"Ah, stick it up somewhere precise and _im_proper, Bottlenose."

"One more dolphin-related quip, and you'll be enjoying a swim with a certain similar-looking fish."

"Does this happen often?" Terra whispered to Bee as she got a distinct sense of déjà-vu.

"So often that if it didn't happen, then I'd have check and make sure that they weren't replaced by a shape-shifter or something." She answered calmly, watching her teammates bicker with a slightly amused expression.

Until the alarm began to ring.

*linebreak*

"I can't believe their leaving me behind." Aqualad said as he watched his teammates leave to take down Steamroller for the fifth time that week.

"I stayed behind to keep you company." Terra pointed out.

"To guard me."

"Ah, same difference."

They were silent for a moment.

"So... What do you want to do?"

*linebreak*

Terra was sitting on the floor in the main room, near a particular piece of furniture in the tower.

"Your table can fold up and go into the floor." Terra said, eyes wide as she watched said table folded into a 3-D three-pointed star shape and was lowered out of sight by an unseen mechanism.

Terra's eyes widened further when she saw what was under the table.

"You have a _couch_ under your table."

A black-cushioned, circular couch, almost exactly like the one at the original tower, was built into a pit sunk into the floor, with one-eighth of the circle occupied by a set of wedge-shaped steps. The folded-up table was just small enough to be lowered through the middle of the couch into the floor. When the table had sunk completely under the couch, a circular metal plate painted with the now-familiar blue-on-white symbol of the Titans East slid out to cover it.

Aqualad grinned at her dinner plate-sized eyes.

"That's only one of the things we can use this for." He pressed another button on the small remote he was holding.

The painted metal panel shot up to a little less than level with the floor, revealing another, unpainted sheet of metal underneath it.

"... you have a coffee table, too."

He nodded.

"... Should I be worried about the fact that the top of the table is also a place people step on?"

"No, Bumblebee already took care of that. But in Speedy's opinion, the normal table is better."

"Why?"

Fifteen minutes later, Terra was still spazzing out.

"I can't believe your table can turn into a _freaking foosball table_!"

Garth grinned.

"You haven't seen the air hockey table yet."

*linebreak*

Five hours and over 35 games of foosball, air hockey, truth-or-dare, and lets-see-if-we-can-throw-a-mushed-up-marshmallow-high-enough-to-make-it-stick-to-the-ceiling later, they were both bored out of their minds.

"... I thought of something else we could do."

"As long as it doesn't involve dares of any kind, then great. What is it?"

"I forget what it's called, but basically, it's a game where one person says four things about themselves, three truths and one lie, and the other person has to guess which one is the lie."

Garth thought for a few moments.

"Okay then. Let's play."

They decided that Terra would go first. She thought for a few moments, then nodded.

"Got them."

"Alright then, let's hear them."

"One, I have a brother. Two, I was raised in Europe. Three, I've been on a plane before. Four, I know how to drive."

"Four." He answered immediately.

"Nope. I do know how to drive."

He stared at her.

"... You were a statue for _how_ many years?"

"Just under two and a half."

"And how old are you now?"

"Sixteen."

He blinked.

"... _When _did you learn how to _drive_?!"

"I think I was around eleven, maybe twelve." She answered, smirking slightly at his goggle-eyed face. "Moving on."

Blank stare.

"Garth." She said loudly, snapping her fingers in front of his eyes. "Hello."

Blink.

"Oh, right."

Garth started thinking, weighing the three remaining statements.

On one hand, Terra really didn't seem like someone who had spent much of her life in Europe. Besides, she didn't have even a trace of an accent. On the other hand, she _had_ traveled around most of the rest of the world, and it may have been a long time since she had lived in Europe. Her having a brother was pretty much fifty-fifty, and the thing about her having been on a plane before had to be true, if she had "been everywhere before".

... Unless she couldn't afford a plane ticket. Or she was afraid of heights.

"Three?"

"Yep. Your turn."

He blinked.

_"... Ooookay..."_

"... Uh... I never breathed air until the first time I came to the surface... I was scared of fish when I was a kid... I knew a few of the Titans, some originals and some honoraries, before I was a Titan myself... And..." He grinned. "I've set fire to Batman's cape before."

Terra spat out her soda.

"WHAT?!"

"Guess."

"Four."

"No."

Dead. Silence.

"... You set fire... To Batman's cape."

"You were driving at eleven years old."

"... Fair enough. Three?"

"No. I met Robin, Speedy, and two honorary Titans named Wonder Girl and Kid Flash before any of us were Titans."

"Okay then. Two?"

"Not it either."

Terra gave him a "You Gotta Be F***ing Kidding Me" look.

"You were scared of fish."

"Yes."

"... _You_ were _scared _of _fish_."

"Terra," He said, putting a hand on her shoulder and looking at her seriously. "I need to ask you to do two things for me. One: please never speak of this again, and two: _please _don't tell Speedy."

There was the sound of muffled giggling.

"... Terra?"

"Ptf- uh huh?"

"Are you laughing at me?"

"Uh huh." She managed to get out before she dissolved into a laughing fit.

Garth sighed.

"So, how about Pictionary?"

**A/N: I'm not entirely satisfied with this, but this chapter is already a few days late, and I just wanted it to be **_**finished**_**. I am thoroughly sick of typing this chapter.**

**Now, to end this chapter on a happy note: I RAN THE MILE-AND-A-HALF FASTER THAN MY SISTER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE! :D**


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: ****So, this chapter took a long time to finish. It didn't help that I started this while sitting in my basement, thanks to that **_**stupid**_** emergency broadcasting system. Whether it's crashing my birthday when they're testing it, or crashing my weekend when it's **_**not**_** being tested (if you know what I mean), its dead set against my finishing this Fic. Wanna know the worst part? My mom wouldn't let us go back up until our piece of garbage weather radio said it was safe, and it's batteries just so happened to be dead. Curse you weather. *glares and shakes fist at the sky* Knowing that this could've been posted earlier if I hadn't stayed up till midnight last Sunday assembling my new desk and gotten a massive cleaning kick on Monday just makes it worse. **

**... And now the weather radio's horror-movie-scream static is stuck in my head. I hate my life.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Teen Titans, I could afford to buy my mom a weather radio that didn't exist solely to make our lives harder.**

Terra was not tired. She may have exhausted herself that afternoon looking for clay suitable for the sculpture version of her drawing of Garth (she refused to buy the ridiculously overpriced artificial mud the craft stores offered), and she may have used up even more precious energy actually _getting _it out of the ground, and spent almost six hours looking for and altering a cave she could use for a temporary sculpting studio (professional purpose or not, she knew better than to bring mud in the tower), "cleaning" the clay until it was the right quality, wedging it, and forming it into the general shape she wanted before returning to the tower thanks to the fading light, _and_ she may have just spent two-and-a-half _more_ hours sitting in front of the large, thin piece of paper she was copying her drawing onto to see if there were any minor changes she wanted to make before she started on the final version, and the hands on her clock may have been inching closer and closer to midnight while a certain blond sat in front of the non-messy half of her new long-term project as she abused her eyes, hands, and overall health...

But she wasn't tired.

_"Just a little bit longer."_ She told herself as she chewed her fifteenth roll of Smarties, resisting the urge to get something caffeine-related instead.

_"Sure, Terra."_ Her common sense stated sarcastically._ "Just keep telling yourself that when you wake up tomorrow and find out you ruined the rough draft by drooling on it in your sleep."_

_"I'm just going to finish the line art, and then I'll go to sleep. I swear."_

_"You said the same thing about the shape placement back when it was still night instead of near the wee hours of the morn."_

_"But-"_

_"Terra," _Her common sense sighed._ "It's a quarter-to-twelve. You know how hard it is for you to get to sleep after midnight. In fifteen minutes, you'll be pulling a very unnecessary all-nighter. Go. To. Sleep."_

_"Now?" _She whined oh-so-maturely.

_"Your subconscious is going to start singing "Narwhals" now... I don't know when it will stop..." _

_"Fine."_ Terra sighed, setting her pencil down in surrender.

*linebreak*

This was by far the strangest night Terra had ever had. Or, more accurately, the strangest sleep cycle she'd ever had.

First, she dreamed she just moved into some kind of haunted house that came to life and pulled itself out of the ground, started chasing her, and ate her, obviously ending the dream.

Now, this in itself would not be unusual, if she had woken up after that had happened. But, instead of waking up, she was simply yanked into another, very different dream.

Someone was attacking her, that much she could tell, but it was as if she was looking at everything through a backwards telescope that had pop-bottle glass for a lens. Everything looked fuzzy and far away, and sounded and felt that way as well. The other person was shouting, and seemed to be throwing something big at her, but Terra couldn't focus enough to understand anything they were saying, or feel more than a soft bump when one of the objects they were throwing hit their mark. White fog swirled around her so she barely knew which way was up, blurring her attacker's form further, hiding them as they pummeled her with something she couldn't even begin to recognize as her arms moved to shield herself almost of their own accord. The "soft bump" had begun to change, becoming clearer, sharper, like something hard and heavy and jagged was pounding on her like a Steel City hailstorm, digging into every inch of unprotected skin it could find. She was dizzy, the fog was getting darker, closing in on her, suffocating her, the dizziness was worse, something was pounding in her brain, a feeling that hurt so much that she could barely tell whether anything else was happening in the dream, so agonizing that it crippled her heart and ripped it in two. The ground had disappeared at some point, she couldn't remember when. She was falling. The wind stung, the fog was cold, her stomach had been left behind somewhere above her, the dizziness had become a headache. Everything hurt, everything hurt _so bad_. _Oh God, make it stop!_

After what seemed like hours, she finally landed, slamming into the ground as the white cloud disappeared, replaced by gray stone. She could vaguely see that she was in some kind of cave, with a light grayish-yellow blur near the top.

And then the world exploded.

*linebreak*

"It was just a dream. It was just a dream. It was just a dream." She chanted to herself, splashing water on her face as she tried to wash the dream out of her mind.

_"Why did I even have a nightmare, anyway?"_ She thought._ "Nothing bad happened today, I wasn't thinking about anything bad before I went to sleep, and nothing in that dream made any sense. There's no reason why I-"_

Her thoughts were cut off by a now-familiar presence in her mind, ebbing and flowing from her awareness like an erratic heartbeat. Then, suddenly, it jumped up, clinging to her mentally for dear life, like a frightened child clutching a teddy bear.

She blinked, then made her way toward the stairs, an idea beginning to form.

*linebreak*

"Garth?" Terra called softly, knocking on the Atlantean's door.

A series of slight thumping noises sounded inside the room.

"Garth?" She said more loudly, knocking again before putting her ear up to the door-

- Just in time to hear the room's occupant whimpering.

Terra slid the door open, light from the hallway, water tanks, and windows sending unfamiliar, watery reflections weaving across the room.

And the blanket-wrapped knot on the bed.

"I thought so." She whispered, quietly observing her friend as he shifted in his sleep, a soft moan escaping his lips.

She stepped inside, sliding the door closed slowly before walking across the room, gently settling herself on the edge of the bed.

"You accidentally shared your nightmare with me, didn't you?" A flinch and another soft moan answered her question.

"Well, thanks for letting me know about it." She said, smiling softly. "I still owe you several nightmare exterminations."

She yelped slightly as she felt a particularly sharp pull on her mind, coupled with a violent jerk from her sleeping friend.

"Alright, alright, I'll get on with it." She joked, closing her eyes as she constructed a new dream she could slip into the place of his old one.

"Just so you know, it probably won't be a very creative dream. You just taught me how to do this today, after all. Most likely you'll just end up floating aimlessly in the water looking at random fish for the rest of the night."

More whimpering.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Anything is better than what you're dreaming right now. Give me one more minute, alright? I'm almost done."

She blocked out her surroundings as she finished the rest of the dream, wishing it wasn't exactly what she said it would be, aimless floating and random fish. Then she remembered one of Aqualad's tips: _"The dream you put in place of a nightmare is just a basic starting point. If you can't think of anything else to put in the dream, just end your part with the other person expecting something to happen. Their mind will take it from there."_

_"Alrighty, then."_ She thought as she put the finishing touches on the dream.

"Okay Garth, ready?"

He may not have been awake, but his restless shifting was a perfectly clear answer.

"More than ready, I see." She commented, reaching out with her mind.

She felt like she was physically blown back a few inches by the force of the other teen's distress pulsing through her mind.

"Okay," She said dazedly, shaking her head to clear the fog. "That didn't work, but why... Oh."

She'd forgotten to use a contact point, which was usually just a light touch on the forehead, and acted as a sort of combined shield and lifeline that was supposed to help a person focus on what they were doing so they could replace someone else's dream without getting overwhelmed by their thoughts and emotions.

"Well, I feel stupid now."

She slowly leaned over Garth, reaching for his forehead.

"Don't worry, Garth," She whispered. "This time, I'll get it right."

Her fingertips lightly brushed his forehead, and in the split second between when their minds touched and when she planted the dream, she felt the full, undiluted force of his nightmare.

She jumped back, barely choking back a startled gasp as she listened to the youth's breathing slowly return to normal.

_"Woh,"_ She thought. _"I guess when you accidentally share a dream, the person your sharing it with doesn't get it as clearly as you do."_

She reached out once more, ignoring the slowly drying sweat on his skin as she checked to make sure her dream wouldn't backpedal into another nightmare.

Gentler, happier images flowed into her mind this time, spreading out into a cheerful, adorable scene bathed in blue-tinged, watery light. Terra figured that tapping into someone else's dream was probably disrespecting their privacy, but the sight of a slightly younger Garth darting around, playing hide-and-seek with an adorable little blond toddler (identified as Garth's adoptive brother by a stream of background thoughts) was just too darn cute for Terra to force herself away from just yet.

She carefully tucked the mental connection away into the corner of her mind, then slowly pulled her hand away from the black-eyed dreamer.

_"Maybe I should keep an eye on the dream for a little bit."_ She thought, quietly leaving the room and walking back up to her own. _"Just to make sure that he doesn't slip back into a nightmare."_

_"Yeah, right."_ Her common sense snorted._ "You just want to watch cute little Garth and his cute little brother some more."_

_"So, does that mean I can't keep watching them?"_ Terra thought, deflating a little.

_"Now I didn't say that."_ Her common sense corrected hastily._ "Staying for a while won't hurt anyone, after all." _

Terra perked up considerably at this, grinning as she darted into her bedroom.

**A/N: Well, we are now making our way back to the plot. Slowly, subtly, and most likely imperceivably unless I wasn't careful enough writing Garth's nightmare, but we're getting there. And I realize that there is a distinct shortage of Mas y Menos in this story. That was mostly because I didn't notice I left them out until Ju5t An0th3r H3d63h06 (whom I am nicknaming JAH, as I am incapable of memorizing names spelled with both numbers **_**and**_** letters) pointed it out, and will be remedied in the next chapter. That is, if I can get them off their sugar high long enough to catch them. *glares at the red-and-white blur that's destroying my flawlessly clean room* NO! NOT THE MINI BOOKSHELF! I'VE GOT**_** GLASS**_** STUFF ON THERE! *crash* **_**OOOOOOOOH**_**, IT'S **_**ON**_** NOW!**


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: I know I'm a week and three days late, but at least I'm uploading two chapters at once, so that's good... Right? (In my defence, my uncle visited last weekend, and uncle-related events kept popping up whenever I was on a roll)**

** Disclaimer: If I owned the Teen Titans, they would still be airing the RIGHT way, but the airing schedule would probably be Young Justice style: weekly episodes for a few weeks, then stop suddenly and without warning for a long time (at least my maximum late-date is two weeks, not six months (: ).**

At some point, Terra must have slipped out of Garth's dream and into one of her own, because Garth's happy dream didn't last long.

There was something burning nearby. Judging from the sheer force if the heat and the smell of singed everything, Garth was fairly certain it was probably the whole world, including himself.

Wait, was that a bubbling noise?

Yep, it was. The world hadn't ended a second time, after all. He was just in a volcano. Crap.

Could he get out? No. He was on a small shelf of rock. A _very_ small shelf. Wait, was that a tunnel behind him?

_*Crash*_

... Not anymore. He was screwed. And dizzy. Was being dizzy a bad sign when you're in someplace hot? Yes, it was. Especially when you're on a very small shelf of rock above a sea of magma that you could fall into at any moment. But the tunnel was gone. He wasn't leaving any time soon

Anyway, he couldn't leave. He was... Waiting for someone?

He thought he saw something moving on the other side of the volcano. Two something's (someone's?). One was glowing. That was who he was waiting for. When the glow left, he could leave.

The non-glowing one left. The glowing one didn't move. It was... Staying? It was doing something. Something important. It had to stay behind.

Alone? No. He'd stay too. Both of them were afraid, but at least they wouldn't be alone.

The glow got bigger. Then it got huge.

It noticed him. It seemed to get happier somehow. Relieved. It was still afraid, but at least it knew it wasn't alone...

When the world exploded.

Garth screamed, shooting up in bed. The giant headache and nausea he got thanks to that motion instantly told him it had been a bad idea.

Minutes later, he was hunched over in the nearest bathroom, making a sacrifice to the porcelain God.

*linebreak*

_*Splash*_

There was a massive splash, followed by what could only be described as a mini big bang made from water.

_"THAT'S IT! I'M DONE!"_

_ "Oh, come on, Garth!" _Tara half shouted, half laughed as the boy tried to (key words) get away from the possessed piece of wood._ "You've spent most of your life in the water. Someone like you not knowing how to surf is practically a crime against humanity."_

_ "Maybe so, but some people label torture as "cruel and unusual punishment", while you obviously have no problem with it!"_

_ "Seriously Garth, learn to have a little fun once in a while."_

An evil grin stretched across his face.

_ "Oh, so it's fun you want?" _He said just before he dived underwater.

Terra sighed and, already guessing what was to come, readied herself.

Right before Garth flipped over her board.

Which she had jumped off of just a split second before. She did a flip in the air just to mock him before she landed flawlessly...

On his back.

The subsequent chaos would later be described as the most epic extreme piggy-back ride in history. Until Garth finally managed to dislodge her from his shoulders/torso, her momentum sending her flying through the air in an impressive back-flip before belly flopping right smack in the middle of the reflection of the late-afternoon/early evening sun.

At first, all Tara could think was:_"I HAVE to ask that camera-happy tourist on the pier for a copy of the picture of that flip, 'cause that was just TOO epic for words."_

Then her mind began to recover enough to think more important thoughts, like: _"Where's the oxygen, and why am I not floating up towards it?"_

By the time she had finished thinking those questions, her mind was up and running well enough to give her the answers: _"Not here."_ and _"Pray tell, what is this "up" that you speak of?"_, both of which led to the very logical thought/question: _"If the it's not here, then WHY IN GOD'S NAME AM I BREATHING!?" _, which was followed by the oh-so-eloquent and informative answer:_ "Uh... Oops?"_

Then Garth was there, wrapping his arms around her as he dragged her back up to the surface.

The moment her head was clear of the water, Tara started coughing and gasping, taking deep, hungry breaths of air.

When she was no longer preoccupied with satisfying her lungs, she realized Garth hadn't let go yet, arms still wrapped around her in a tight embrace.

Terra wasn't sure why a dream that felt so _right _could feel so _wrong._ Not in the sense that she shouldn't be doing what she was doing in the dream, but... She wasn't sure what it was. All she felt were abstract twinges, little nudges in her actions, speech, thoughts, that her subconscious was doing its best to try and explain. As far as she could tell, she felt as if she was holding back, both shielding herself and forbidding herself from... Something. At the same time, there was this feeling of... _incompleteness_. Not in the dream itself, no. Everything in that was perfect. It was more as if she was watching a home video or looking through pictures of an event she could only partly recall, only backwards, if that makes any sense. A feeling that you remember -or think you remember- more things happening at that event than what actually happened.

Wait a minute. If she was remembering more about this dream than what she saw in the dream itself, could that mean the dream was... WHAT?!

Terra nearly laughed out loud when she realized where her train of thought had taken her.

Had she really just wondered if the dream could be a _memory_? What was she thinking? There was no way it would have been possible before she turned to stone, and if she remembered anything about the short periods of life she'd had after that, then it was that, with re-fossilization waiting to pounce on her at any moment, it was dangerous to so much as leave the state, let alone take a cross-country trip. At no point during her "semi-de-fossilization" period would they have so much as been in the same time-zone. Besides, she had been posing as a normal girl the whole time. What would a super-hero want with a normal girl?

And most importantly (which, in this case, translates to: most _randomly_), why did she feel like there was someone else watching this?

_"Ah, whatever."_ She thought as the camera-happy tourist on the pier started shouting about what an _awesome _flip that was, and did they want copies of the pictures of it?_ "I'm sure it's nothing."_

*linebreak*

Understandably, it took Aqualad a long time to get back to sleep, as doing so would mean tempting fate in the hopes that it wouldn't send him another nightmare. But Bee always seemed to know when one of the boys was up late, and he much preferred the wrath of his mind to the wrath of his leader.

When he finally managed to drift off, he was pleasantly surprised.

He was having a _good_ dream.

_"You always have a __**ton**__ of sand in your hair."_ Garth said, watching his companion shake a cloud of the coarse dust from her blond mane.

_"Oh, and that's just __**so**__ unusual for someone who spent all day at the __**beach**__."_ Tara laughed as she waved away the puff of sand._ "You've got a bit of a point though, I need to rinse off. Race you to the water?"_

_ "I'd say sure but I promised myself I'd never risk humiliating you."_

_ "Hey, that's not fair. I won earlier today when we were racing out of the water."_

_ "'Out' being the key word. I dare you to name _one_ time that I was the last one in the water or the first one out. Wait,"_ He frowned as he looked at her in confusion._ "when did we race __**out**__ of the water?"_

_ "This afternoon, just before lunch, remember?"_

_ "Oh, you mean when you were being chased by that snake?" _

_ "Oh, be quiet."_ She laughed._ "I'm racing you to the water, and there's nothing you can do about it. Now come on." _She said, grabbing his hand and pulling him down to the water.

The two teens hit the water head-on, diving under as soon as they were deep enough.

When they resurfaced, laughing and wiping water out of their eyes, Terra grinned mischievously.

_ "So, since I'm all rinsed off, should I go back up and get the surf boards?"_

Garth tackled her, igniting an all-out mega-brawl splashdown.

By the time they stumbled back on the beach, laughing uncontrollably, the sun was starting to set, sending shadows stretching across the deserted beach. Everyone else had gone home, aside from Mr. Camera, who was sitting in the exact same place he had been the entire day, now joined by two little boys, probably his younger brothers. However, he had put his (many) camera(s) away...

And replaced them with a fishing pole.

Awwww heck naw.

_"Excuse me for a moment."_ He said._ "I have to go talk to him for a moment." _

**(A/N:Terra and Aqualad are dreaming in their own, separate point of views. Thus, the dreams split here, and rejoin each other when Garth is done .) **

_ "Catch anything?" _Garth asked casually, leaning against the railing on the pier.

The three boys, all redheads, looked up and grinned.

_ "Not yet."_ The oldest one said before lowering his voice._ "Me and the twins got all the pictures you wanted, by the way."_

_ "Thanks, Wally. And thanks, guys."_ Garth murmured back, nodding to Kid Flash, Mas, and Menos. The Twins gave him a thumbs up.

_ "Can we go now? This is boring. And I promised Speedy we'd have a video game tournament."_

_ "Just a few more minutes, alright?"_

_ "Fine."_ The speedster groaned.

_ "Thanks." _Garth said, turning back towards Tara. Then he stopped._ "Oh, by the way, what exactly do you think you're doing with those fishing poles?"_

Kid Flash grinned.

_ "Getting your attention." _

_ "Right. I need to borrow one of your cameras, by the way."_

_ "Take it and welcome."_

_ "Thanks."_

_ "Why do you have that?"_ Tara asked as Garth walked back with the camera.

_ "Just watch."_ He said, grinning and turning back towards the three redheads, lifting up the camera...

Just in time to take a picture of KF's shirt getting yanked up in the back, courtesy of his fish-hook getting "caught" on it.

**A/N: I FINALLY GOT IN MAS Y MENOS! :D Clever how I did that, huh? Their not in there as much as I had hoped, but I'll figure out some way to get them in here again.**


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: 'Tis short, 'tis late, 'tis my bad. Sorry. :(**

** Disclaimer: I don't own it. If I did, I'd get paid for it, and my mom would stop think I was wasting my time and writing abilities on stuff like this.**

_"So, how do you look like that instead of what you really look like?"_ Dream-Terra asked the green-eyed, ginger-haired girl to her left.

_"Holo-ring, courtesy of Cyborg."_ She said in Kole's voice.

Dream-Terra nodded her understanding as not-dream-Terra's mind was blown.

_"And you?"_ Dream-Terra asked the taller, darker-skinned girl to her right.

_ "No ring for me. I'm already overwhelmed by nearly everything in this time, so I decided I would make do with a new hairstyle, some makeup, and a higher pitched voice."_

*Pop* That was the sound of not-dream-Terra's mind going supernova as she realized that the girl who looked only somewhat-sorta-kinda like Sarasim was _Sarasim_.

Not-dream-Terra's mind remained blown until the girls had walked out of the "school".

_ "So, what do you guys want to do?"_ Terra asked as dream-Niki rummaged through her backpack.

_ "Hold that thought."_ Niki said, slinging her backpack over her arm. _"I forgot my English book. Be right back."_

_"Whoh."_ *pop* Not-dream-Terra is no longer available due to her mind being flung far and wide after realizing that the last member of the group- a black-haired, brown-eyed, strangely pale girl who had been silent until now- happened to be Argent wearing a holo-ring. We shall be focusing on dream-Terra's POV while not-dream-Terra regains her grip on all things sane._ "Don' look now, but a really, really, really cute guy 'ho's abou' to break our 'earts is standing righ' be'ind you." _

Terra and Sara turned around, then turned back, wide-eyed.

_ "Correct me if I'm wrong," _Sara started. _"but I believe this is a scenario in which one would use the phrase: Yum!"_

Terra, however, was wide-eyed for a very different reason.

_"What in the name of all things holy is HE doing here?"_She thought frantically. _"Does he recognize me? Did he even see me? Why is he HERE, of all places? Is he looking over here? Oh GOD please don't let him be looking over here!" _

_ "Terra?"_

_ "Huh?"_ She said, snapping out of her thoughts.

_"Toni just left to go flirt with "Hottie" over there."_ Sara said, nodding to the boy their friend was making her way over to. _"Do you think he's the kind of person who would think her method of flirting makes her seem "cool", or the rarer kind who, in this situation, would be akin to an innocent bystander who must be protected at all costs?"_

Terra smiled, reminded of the difference between "Toni the Flirt" and "Toni the Terrible".

_"The second one, definitely." _She raised an eyebrow at her friend._ "You planning on being the "Brave Damsel swooping in to save the Knight in Distress?"_

_ "With Cyborg undeniably no longer available? Absolutely." _Terra grinned as she watched the eldest of their group dart off after Toni, content that the two of them could keep the boy sufficiently distracted.

_"Where's she going?" _Terra smiled, turning her attention to the youngest of their group (huh, ironic) as she ran back up with her English book.

_ "She's-"_ Terra glanced toward her friend and grinned. _"currently walking back toward us after getting shoved away from the "really, really, really cute guy who's about to break our hearts" by Toni."_

_ "Okay, nice."_ Niki said with a nervous grin as Sara walked back the two. "_But, um, I just saw the really, really, really __**green**__ guy who's about to blow Sara and my freshly minted secret identities to kingdom come. So we all have to pretend like we don't know him and try to get rid of him __**fast**__! And we have to make him think that we're not talking about him, so everyone has to start laughing when I say now. Now."_

Kole started giggling, and the other two indulgently followed suit.

_ "Hey Terra! It's me! Beast Boy!"_

Terra's eyes widened.

_ "This is __**so**__ not my day!"_

_ "Do you know him?" _Terra shrugged at Kole's question, feigning cluelessness as the three girls did what any sensible super-heroines-in-secret-identity-mode and geokinetics-in-hiding would do. Walk away.

_"Terra, wait up!" _

_"Go away, go away, go away!"_

He jumped in front of them. _Wonderful._

There was an awkward silence followed by a little smile and wave from Beast Boy. Great. Now she was going to have to disappoint him... Again.

_ "Sorry, you've got the wrong girl."_

*linebreak*

_"How in the name of all things holy did he manage to talk me into this?" _Terra thought as she sat at one of the tables on the pizza places' roof.

_"You haven't changed a bit Terra."_

Terra frowned.

_ "Why do you keep calling me that?"_

_ "Because you __**are **__Terra."_

_ "What makes you so sure?"_

_ "You look like her, you talk like her, you laugh like her."_ He said, counting off her dangerously large number of familiar traits._ "Don't you remember anything from before?"_

At this moment, the ice in her glass clinked spontaneously, prompting her to pause their conversation to toss a glare at a very recognizable (to her) person across the street.

_ "__Oh yes, I remember __**quite**__ a lot from before."_

_ "I just remember high school."_ She said, doing her best to tune out the conversation until the pizza arrived.

_ "One supreme pizza with extra anchovies, hold the mushrooms, just the way you like it."_

Terra couldn't help wincing, partly at the fact that he remembered that, partly from the affect the *ahem* "extra topping" would have on their hidden watcher.

_ "I don't like anchovies, I'm allergic. I should get going."_ She said as she stood up, purposely knocking over her water-glass. It had done its job. And the last thing she needed was for it to do it again.

Although, now that she thought about it, she probably could've just signaled that to him as she stood up. Eh, oh well. Now, what had Beast Boy been going on about while she was looking across the street? Ah, well. Whatever it was, an excuse to leave would counter it easily.

_"I have a lot of homework to do and I have to get to the computer lab."_ There, that should work.

_"We've got an awesome computer at the tower, you could work there. Be finished in half the time."_

... Or not.

Terra stood for a moment, debating the pros and cons of refusing.

_"__Well, better the stalker I know than the stalker I don't... Know as well. Besides, I __**do**__ have a lot of hom... Oh snap."_

_ "Okay, but I've got to be home before dark."_

_*linebreak*_

_ "Well," _Terra thought sarcastically, wiping mud off her face as she walked away from the tower. _"That went well."_

She scowled deeper when she heard familiar footsteps (not Beast Boy's) coming up behind her.

_"Sorry, bud."_ She thought as she hailed a taxi._ "One super-powered stalker is enough for one day. Try again next week."_

*linebreak*

She was in a memory dream now. She could tell. And it wasn't in the "it may or may not be a real memory" feeling she got from the previous dreams. this was undeniable.

She felt as if she was only semiconscious, her head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls (like that almost-but-not-quite-a-headache feeling you get when you've got a mild cold), she couldn't move, and it seemed as if she had been deprived of all her senses except for her hearing, and even that was so fuzzy that it seemed more like a sixth sense than any sort of physical awareness.

_"What universe were you raised in that made you think that an idea like **that** could work?"_

_ "Hey, that sounds like the guy Raven and the rest of them_ **(A/N: I'm getting sick of saying all their** **names.) **_were talking to right after they woke me up."_

_ "Okay, look, it's worked in every fairy tale it's mentioned in that we know of, and it's even been used in a lot of Atlantean and Azarathian stories. And, according to Raven's spellbooks and simple common sense, a trick that well-known **must** be so for a reason."_

_ "Alright, let's just assume for a moment that this could work. Why me?"_

_ "You liked her, didn't you?"_

A pause.

_ "... It was a crush. And a short-lived one, since by the time I met her, she was obviously not single anymore."_

_ "Which is why you spent so much time finding ways to get to know her after you met her and before she betrayed the Titans." _A sarcastic voice said.

_ "And why, when you and the rest of Titans East came to babysit Jump City during the BoE fiasco_**(A/N: See episode 56 "For Real")**_, you went out of your way to strike up and maintain a relationship with a civilian who looked **just like her**, even going so far as to use your nearly nonexistent secret ID to introduce yourself in case your superhero ID would scare her away, and continued said relationship right up until she "moved" and you got called back to Steel City."_ Another voice added helpfully.

_ "And why you were secretly stalking Beast Boy and that Terra lookalike schoolgirl he was harassing a while__ ago."_

_ "And yes, we know abou' tha', even though you were the firs' one to ge' back to the tower after picking up your overnigh' stuff."_

The three female's response muted both Terra and the other guy in equal levels.

_ "Please say their wrong or talking about a completely unrelated topic. Please say their wrong or talking about a completely unrelated topic."_

_ "... How did you know about that?" _

_ "SHOOT!" _

_ "For the first one: Beast Boy."_ A new, gravelly voice said. _"For the second: Speedy. And as for the third, those three-" _She indicated the other three female voices. _"__were there."_

_"And I can**not** be more amazed by that fact." _

_"... Alright, fine. Maybe all that is true. The first one was just me being friendly, the second was a coincidence, and the third I did to make sure that Beast Boy didn't make too big of a fool out of himself, like any good friend would do. Besides, why would any of that make a difference? Only one of them was her. They were three different people."_

_ "No, they weren't."_ The gravelly voiced girl said. _"__They were her_. _All three of__ them"_

_"Duh."_

However, this idea seemed to have either never occurred to the boy, or had occurred to him when he was deep in denial. Proof of this was that this statement shocked him into silence, and when he did speak, it was in such a low tone that a soft, unintelligible, slightly breathless murmur was all that Terra could hear through the fluff in her head.

*linebreak*

_"Looks like you were right." _The oldest of the four girl voices sighed._"It didn't work."_

_ "Wait."_The boy said. _"I think something happened."_

_ "Well, wha'ever i' was, i' didn' 'appen enough. Wha' are you going to do, try again?"_

_ "Well, he might as well."_ Gravelly voice droned.

_"No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He might as **not** well try again. He might as **not** well try again."_

Then Terra felt something. Just the slightest hint of a touch before the fluff in her brain was swept away as awareness flooded back into her mind-

-And as she noticed another awareness that had become all too familiar.

Terra's eyes snapped open just a moment before the dream disappeared, locking with another reassuringly, confusingly, and annoyingly familiar pair.

A solid black, white pupiled pair.

When Terra was fully awake, her mind refused to start up again so she could find ways to deny the events from the dream, opting instead to express her feelings about it.

"... O.O !"

**(A/N: I apologize for the use of an emoticon in the text. I couldn't think of anything she might've actually said in that situation.)**

**A/N: I have no right to feel proud of this late and inadequately short chapter, but is it alright if I at least feel clever about it? **


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: I KNOW! I've been gone for an obscenely long amount of time. But I have two valid excuses for this absence: 1. Writers block. 2. My mom's computer broke, so she stole mine. Actually, she still has it, I'm just putting my ninja skills to work. -.- This was pretty much all done on my IPod, and there was minimal editing because I just wanted this POSTED, but... Well... It's done. So here ya go. :)**

** Disclaimer: I haven't uploaded a new chapter for this for nine. Months. Do you really think I could handle the actual show?**

Beast Boy stared blankly at the pedestal where Terra's statue once sat. He'd been standing there for a long time, now, and in any other situation he would've called one of the other Titans to make sure they wouldn't worry about him. Of course, this was far from being any other situation.

It had been exactly five weeks and two days since the day he had found Terra's statue gone. About two weeks after that he'd come back. For some subconscious reason that trumped the knowledge (and the worry) that doing so would make it that much harder to accept the fact that Terra didn't remember (didn't want to remember), he came back. As it turned out, he needn't have worried about that. The statue was back in it's usual place, same as always.

How it happened, he didn't know, but he knew it was probably for the best. After all, he knew from past experience that accepting that someone couldn't come back was easier to do than accepting that someone didn't want to come back.

He'd almost accepted it.

He'd only come back to see the statue again.

To prove to himself once and for all that she was going to stay that way.

That she couldn't come back.

That she was gone.

And she was gone all right, but not in the "Okay, I can let this go now." sense of the word.

Her statue wasn't there anymore. And the fresh traces of her familiar, earthy scent was proof that she hadn't left this place as a statue. Somewhere, somehow, Terra was back.

Awake.

Alive.

And the few short seconds it took him to realize that was all it took to effectively bulldoze the fragile acceptance he'd almost managed to achieve over the past few weeks and sent questions, old and new, racing through his mind.

"Why was her statue here the last time I came? How did she come back? Where is she now? Can I find her? _Should_ I find her?"

As he was completely focused on these thoughts, he didn't notice when a dark, indistinct shadow flitted out of the cave into the early morning light.

*linebreak*

"Good morning." Raven greeted Terra dryly as her bedraggled, sleep-deprived image flickered onto the screen.

"Mhm." Was the latter's articulate answer.

Raven arched her eyebrow.

"Wondering why I called you?"

"Mhm." The blond repeated.

"Are you listening to me?" The sorceress asked, her voice completely devoid of any infliction or emphasis whatsoever.

"Mhm."

Raven sighed.

"Snakes."

"Where?!" The blond all but screamed as adrenaline coursed through her system, snapping her awake.

"Now that I have your attention," the dark-themed girl said. "we have a problem."

"How much of a problem?" Terra asked, relaxing into a more-or-less awake state after assuring herself that no snakes were in the vicinity after all.

"Remember how I told you that Beast Boy was the one who told me that your statue was back after the last time he saw you at the school?"

"Yeah."

"He knows it's gone again."

There was a beat of silence as Terra processed that statement before she groaned and buried her head in her arms.

"I don't need this right now."

"None of us do."

A beat of silence.

"We're going to be tiptoeing around him for the rest of our lives, aren't we?"

"It would seem so."

*linebreak*

Almost right after she hung up, Raven's communicator rang again. "I swear to Azar if you have more bad news-" Raven said as soon as Aqualad's form came into focus.

"I think she knows."

Another beat of silence.

"Fan-freaking-tastic."

*linebreak*

"- And that's how we're going to take care of the issue." Raven finished.

"I can only think of a few problems with that plan."

Raven sighed. She knew that just finishing explaining the plan without getting interrupted had ment nothing.

"First of all, aren't you and Beast Boy-"

"Yes, we are." Raven answered, cutting Aqualad off.

"Then bringing Terra over and having her and Beast Boy talk will help... How exactly?"

Raven rolled her eyes. She knew that wasn't what he really wanted to ask. She'd explained this while she was outlining the plan.

"Because neither Beast Boy _or_ Terra will be able to move on until they've either finished or re-started their relationship. If they decide to finish it, then great. Happy endings all around. If they decide to re-start it, this was my first relationship that I actually consider a relationship. I knew Beast Boy and I were very different, and I knew we might not have been able to make this work. And you already told me that you would be able to handle it if she decided... It." She said, carefully avoiding the prospect that neither of them wanted tactually acknowledge at the moment. "So that option is okay, too. And before you bring up how hard it's going to be to convince Terra, I called her before I called you. She's okay with it, as long as you and the rest of your team come along to take at least a little bit of the spotlight off her."

"Whoh whoh whoh." Aqualad cut in. "You told her the plan? The _whole_ plan?"

Raven's eye twitched. "No, there was one part of the plan that I left out, since it contained a few things that I want you to tell her yourself. And speaking of that part of the plan, why don't you just spit out what you want to say about it already?"

Aqualad sputtered for a few seconds before bursting out: "Why do I have to tell  
him?!"

The resident bird-themed heroine rested her head in her hand.

"Because I'm sick of tiptoeing around him like this." She growled. "You can chose how much you tell him about your involvement in this, and you can take your sweet time telling Terra, but he _will_ know that you're involved in this, and he _will_ know how. Now for Azar's sake man up, go tell Bumblebee so you can all get going, and _stop being scared of a skinny little fifteen-year-old lovesick geek_!"

"Who can turn into the most deadly animals on earth."

"_**Aqualad**_." She snarled, eyes starting to glow red.

"I'll see what I can do." Said teen replied meekly.

**A/N: Like I said, short, minimally edited, and very, very late, but, also like I said, it's done. And I SWEAR, the next chapter will not take this long.**


End file.
